Abstract
Metabolomic studies have demonstrated the existence of biological signatures in blood of patients with arterial hypertension, but no study has hitherto reported the sexual dimorphism of these signatures. We compared the plasma metabolomic profiles of 28 individuals (13 women and 15 men) with essential arterial hypertension with those of a healthy control group (18 women and 18 men), using targeted metabolomics. Among the 188 metabolites explored, 152 were accurately measured. Supervised OPLS-DA (orthogonal partial least squares-discriminant analysis) showed good predictive performance for hypertension in both sexes (Q2cum = 0.59 in women and 0.60 in men) with low risk of overfitting (p-value-CV ANOVA = 0.004 in women and men). Seventy-five and 65 discriminant metabolites with a VIP (variable importance for the projection) greater than 1 were evidenced in women and men, respectively. Both sexes showed a considerable increase in phosphatidylcholines, a decrease in C16:0 with an increase in C28:1 lysophosphatidylcholines, an increase in sphingomyelins, as well as an increase of symmetric dimethylarginine (SDMA), acetyl-ornithine and hydroxyproline. Twenty-nine metabolites, involved in phospholipidic and cardiac remodeling, arginine/nitric oxide pathway and antihypertensive and insulin resistance mechanisms, discriminated the metabolic sexual dimorphism of hypertension. Our results highlight the importance of sexual dimorphism in arterial hypertension.
Highlights
Metabolomic studies have demonstrated the existence of biological signatures in blood of patients with arterial hypertension, but no study has hitherto reported the sexual dimorphism of these signatures
There was a difference between groups in systolic and diastolic blood pressure, in both women and men, as well as in body mass index (BMI) and homocysteinemia in women only
Lysophosphatidylcholines have been found to be modified in the plasma of pre-hypertensive patients[23], but it should be noted that, in contrast to our own findings, in this study the LysoPC C16:0 was seen to be at higher level
Summary
Metabolomic studies have demonstrated the existence of biological signatures in blood of patients with arterial hypertension, but no study has hitherto reported the sexual dimorphism of these signatures. Several metabolomic studies have demonstrated the existence of biological signatures in the blood and urine of patients with high blood pressure from various regions, including African populations, and using various analytical platforms and study designs. These studies have been recently reviewed[9,10]. The effect of antihypertensive treatments is known to depend to a large extent on sex[28]
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