Abstract
Introduction
Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a multifactorial autoimmune disease with heterogeneous clinical manifestations mediated by immune dysregulation.
Objectives
We aimed to analyze the metabolomic differences in free fatty acids (FFAs) between patients with SLE and healthy controls (HCs).
Methods
In this study, the levels of 24 FFAs, as their tert-butyldimethylsilyl derivatives, in the plasma of 41 patients with SLE and 41 HCs, were investigated using gas chromatography with mass spectrometry in selected-ion monitoring mode.
Results
The results showed that patients with SLE and HCs had significantly different levels of 13 of the 24 FFAs. The levels of myristic, palmitoleic, oleic, and eicosenoic acids were significantly higher, whereas the levels of caproic, caprylic, linoleic, stearic, arachidonic, eicosanoic, behenic, lignoceric, and hexacosanoic acids were significantly lower in patients with SLE, than in the HCs. In the partial-correlation analysis of the FFA profiles and markers of disease activity of SLE, several metabolic markers correlated with SLE disease activity.
Conclusions
Our results provide a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between FFAs and markers of SLE disease activity. Thus, this approach has promising potential for the discovery of metabolic biomarkers of SLE.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by a grant from the Korea Health Technology R&D Project, through the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI), funded by the Ministry of Health & Welfare, Republic of Korea (Grant Number: HI16C0992), and the Priority Research Centers Program, through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, Republic of Korea (2009-0093826).
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This study’s protocol was approved by the Ajou University Hospital Institutional Review Board (AJIRB-BMR-SMP-14-232).
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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
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Tae Hwan Shin and Hyoun-Ah Kim have contributed equally to this work.
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Shin, T.H., Kim, HA., Jung, JY. et al. Analysis of the free fatty acid metabolome in the plasma of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus and fever. Metabolomics 14, 14 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11306-017-1308-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11306-017-1308-6