Plasma Amino Acid Profile in Patients with Aortic Dissection

Linlin Wang,Sha Liu,Ping Ma,Haitao Yu,Song Xue,Baohong Jiang,Peng Wu,Kenka Cho,Li Zhang,Wengang Yang,Xue Li

doi:10.1038/srep40146

Abstract

Aortic dissection (AD), a severe cardiovascular disease with the characteristics of high mortality, is lack of specific clinical biomarkers. In order to facilitate the diagnosis of AD, we investigated plasma amino acid profile through metabolomics approach. Total 33 human subjects were enrolled in the study: 11 coronary heart disease (CHD) patients without aortic lesion and 11 acute AD and 11 chronic AD. Amino acids were identified in plasma using liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS), and were further subjected to multiple logistic regression analysis. The score plots of principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares-discriminate analysis (PLS-DA) showed clear discrimination of CHD patients with AD, acute AD or chronic AD patients, respectively. The contents of histidine, glycine, serine, citrate, ornithine, hydroxyproline, proline and sarcosine were significant different in acute AD patients comparing with CHD patients. The levels of citrate, GABA, glutamate and cysteine were significant different in chronic AD patients comparing with CHD patients. The contents of glutamate and phenylalanine were significant changed in acute AD patients comparing with chronic AD patients. Plasma aminograms were significantly altered in patients with AD comparing with CHD, especially in acute AD, suggesting amino acid profile is expected to exploit a novel, non-invasive, objective diagnosis for AD.

Highlights

Aortic dissection (AD) is a potentially lethal vascular disease with the characteristics of high mortality[1]
; we investigated the possibility to use amino acid profile for discrimination of aortic dissection from coronary artery disease, and to further develop amino acid profile as a novel diagnostic method to save the lives of AD patents in time
The decline of potassium (K) level was found for acute AD (3.69 ± 0.28 mEg/L, p < 0.01), chronic AD (3.95 ± 0.37 mEg/L, p < 0.05) or AD (3.82 ± 0.34 mEg/L, p < 0.01) comparing with coronary heart disease (CHD) patients (4.33 ± 0.39 mEg/L), separately

Summary

Introduction

Aortic dissection (AD) is a potentially lethal vascular disease with the characteristics of high mortality[1]. The diagnosis of AD was mainly made according to confirmatory imaging such as spiral computed tomography angiogram[3], magnetic resonance imaging[4] or intraoperative visualization such as transthoracic or transesophageal echocardiography[5]. These imaging detection are costly and frequently require patient transfer to specialized clinical centers. The amino acid balance in patients with various diseases often differs from that maintained in healthy individual. Metabolic changes detecting from amino acid profiles could potentially be useful in disease diagnosis. New technology development reduced both the time and the cost of analysis for amino-acid measurements

Methods

Results

Conclusion