Abstract
A causal relationship between plasma ceramide concentration and respiratory distress symptoms in COVID-19 patients is inferred. In this study, plasma samples of 52 individuals infected with COVID-19 were utilized in a lipidomic analysis. Lipids belonging to the ceramide class exhibited a 400-fold increase in total plasma concentration in infected patients. Further analysis led to the demonstration of concentration dependency for severe COVID-19 respiratory symptoms in a subclass of ceramides. The subclasses Cer(d18:0/24:1), Cer(d18:1/24:1), and Cer(d18:1/22:0) were shown to be increased by 48-, 40-, and 33-fold, respectively, in infected plasma samples and to 116-, 91- and 50-fold, respectively, in plasma samples with respiratory distress. Hence, monitoring plasma ceramide concentration, can be a valuable tool for measuring effects of therapies on COVID-19 respiratory distress patients.
Highlights
A causal relationship between plasma ceramide concentration and respiratory distress symptoms in COVID-19 patients is inferred
Cer involvement has been highlighted in reports of lung diseases, including acute lung injury, cystic fibrosis, emphysema, lung infections, and a sthma[13,15]
These reports show pulmonary manifestations to be the main symptoms of Cer-mediated toxicity
Summary
A causal relationship between plasma ceramide concentration and respiratory distress symptoms in COVID-19 patients is inferred. Altered lipid metabolism was reported by Thomas et al, in particular, short- and medium-chain saturated fatty acids, acyl-carnitines, and sphingolipids in RBCs from COVID-19 p atients[8] All these studies have reported unbiased analyses of patient plasma samples, and all have shown that changes in the Lipidome are associated with severe COVID-19 infection. The typical approach for identifying causal relationships between potential metabolic signals and the factors they regulate, is by designed experiments for the generation of dynamic multi-omics datasets that systematically incorporates prior knowledge In such studies if a metabolite associated with the risk factor are shown to be associated with the outcome, the plausibility that the risk factor is a causal determinant of Scientific Reports | (2021) 11:20866
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