The goal of researchers around the world was to study the plasma of people diagnosed with covid-19 to look for biomarkers that indicate the patient’s risk of developing severe forms of the disease. A group at the University of São Paulo (USP) recently published a paper along these lines in the Journal of Proteome Research.
At the São Carlos Institute of Chemistry (IQSC-USP), the team coordinated by Professor Daniel R. Cardoso analyzed plasma of 110 patients with flu symptoms who were admitted, still in 2020, to the Hospital of the Federal University of São Paulo. (Unifesp). Among these individuals, 57 (control groups) were not infected with the new coronavirus, while 53 tested positive for Sars-CoV-2. Among those infected, ten had complications and were admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) and two died.
In patients infected with the new coronavirus, it was possible to observe variations in the concentration of six substances (metabolites) produced naturally by our body and found in the blood: glycerin, acetate, 3-aminoisobutyrate, formate, glucuronate and lactate. The greater the imbalance in the number of these metabolites at the onset of the infection, the worse the human health conditions became. The investigation was supported by FAPESP.
“What we have seen in patients who have progressed to severe cases of covid-19 is that there has been a more pronounced change in the concentration of these compounds when seeking medical care,” says Banny Correia, a postdoctoral fellow at IQSC- USP and the one. the author of the article ..
According to Cardoso, by controlling the amount of these six substances produced by different metabolic pathways, it is possible to have a prognosis about how severe the infection will be. “Thus, when the patient seeks help, the doctor will be able to predict through a clinical examination whether he will need to be hospitalized and, therefore, act quickly to prevent the evolution of the disease,” he assesses.
According to the professor, the new coronavirus causes changes in different metabolic processes in the human body, especially in energy production pathways, regardless of the Sars-CoV-2 variant.
“The Sars-CoV-2 virus infects the cell, alters its metabolism and uses the energy pathway to reproduce itself. In addition, variations occur in the number of these six substances, with some concentrations being reduced and others increasing. these compounds indicate how much their metabolism has been affected, allowing us to predict if the patient’s clinical condition will worsen, ”he reported.
Understand the techniques used
In the research, blood samples were analyzed by high-field nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy – a technique that requires sophisticated equipment present in one of the IQSC-USP laboratories. According to the researchers, however, the assessment can also be done through simple clinical tests conducted in laboratories and hospitals, focusing specifically on the panel of metabolites identified in the research. “The result is ready quickly,” says Correia.
The researchers ’expectation is that the new method will become a protocol adopted by hospitals in the future. To validate the technique, in the next steps of the research, scientists plan to expand the number of blood plasma samples to be evaluated and include new groups in the study, such as vaccines that contract covid-19, for example.
Another goal is to include information about gender and age in the statistics. “In addition to covid-19, this type of analysis could help discover marker metabolites that predict the severity of other viral infections and help a faster response to future pandemics,” Cardoso concludes.
The article H qNMR-based Metabolic Discrimination in Covid-19 Severity You can read at: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jproteome.1c00977.