Untargeted plasma metabolomics reveals extensive metabolic alterations among treatment naïve HIV/HCV co-infected patients with liver disease progression

Title : Untargeted plasma metabolomics reveals extensive metabolic alterations among treatment naïve HIV/HCV co-infected patients with liver disease progression

Abstract:

Introduction: Both HIV and HCV (Hepatitis C virus) may induce metabolic disorders and cause liver complications. Therefore, we aim to analyze the metabolite differences among treatment naïve HIV/HCV co-infected patients with versus without liver disease progression (LDP) and HIV mono-infected patients.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in 65 HIV/HCV co-infected patients (22 with LDP and 43 without) and 65 HIV mono-infected patients in Dehong prefecture of Yunnan province, China. Plasma metabolomics were measured by gas-chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS).
Discrimination analysis, pathway enrichment analysis, generalized linear model with binomial distribution and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) were conducted to identify bilateral differences in metabolites and pathways in different comparison groups.
Results: A total of 10831 with 673 named and 10158 unnamed metabolites were detected. Compared to HIV/HCV co-infected patients without LDP, phenylalanine, tyrosine and tryptophan biosynthesis pathway with the increased level of tyrosine were significantly altered among HIV/HCV co-infected patients with LDP. Compared to HIV mono-infected patients, the decreased level of glutamine and increased levels of glutamic acid, arachidonic acid and its derives were identified among HIV/HCV co-infected patients. Metabolite panels adjusted for baseline information had a higher accuracy than baseline model (without metabolite information) in distinguishing HIV/HCV co-infected patients with verse without LDP (AUC 0.951 vs 0.849, P=0.027) and HIV/HCV co-infected patients from HIV mono-infected patients(AUC 0.889 vs. 0.766, P <0.001).
Conclusion: A novel set of metabolites were found to discriminate HIV/HCV co-infected patients with versus without LDP, and from HIV mono-infected patients, which may have mechanistic and interventional implications.

Biography:

I am Jiayu He, a PhD student major in epidemiology and statistics in Fudan University, Shanghai, China and I will graduate in June, 2024. My doctoral research focus on the genetic susceptibility of subclinical atherosclerosis among people with HIV (PWH). I have conducted a genome-wide association analysis and gene-environment interactions among comparable PWH (n=2850) and negative controls (n=5410) in the eastern China. We identified that different from HIV-negative counterparts, host genome had a greater impact on young PWH rather than the elders.
I have published more than 6 original research focused on the people with HIV and hope my efforts could bring some comforts to those vulnerable populations.