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Review
. 2023 Feb 15:10:1111482.
doi: 10.3389/fmolb.2023.1111482. eCollection 2023.

Metabolomics as a powerful tool for diagnostic, pronostic and drug intervention analysis in COVID-19

Chiara Bruzzone  1 , Ricardo Conde  1 , Nieves Embade  1 , José M Mato  1   2 , Oscar Millet  1   2
Affiliations
Review

Metabolomics as a powerful tool for diagnostic, pronostic and drug intervention analysis in COVID-19

Chiara Bruzzone et al. Front Mol Biosci. .

Abstract

COVID-19 currently represents one of the major health challenges worldwide. Albeit its infectious character, with onset affectation mainly at the respiratory track, it is clear that the pathophysiology of COVID-19 has a systemic character, ultimately affecting many organs. This feature enables the possibility of investigating SARS-CoV-2 infection using multi-omic techniques, including metabolomic studies by chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry or by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Here we review the extensive literature on metabolomics in COVID-19, that unraveled many aspects of the disease including: a characteristic metabotipic signature associated to COVID-19, discrimination of patients according to severity, effect of drugs and vaccination treatments and the characterization of the natural history of the metabolic evolution associated to the disease, from the infection onset to full recovery or long-term and long sequelae of COVID.

Keywords: COVID-19; LC/GC-MS; NMR; SARS-CoV-2 infection; lipidomics; long covid; metabolomics; phenoreversion.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
A consensus view of the metabolic signature of COVID-19 patients. Arrow colors indicate if metabolites are upregulated (red) or downregulated (blue). The letter size is proportional to the supporting experimental evidence. Color legend for the metabolic pathways: tryptophan metabolism (pink), central metabolism (blue), purine metabolism and urea cycle (green), lipids (orange), lipoproteins (yellow), other (black). VLDL, very low-density lipoproteins; LDL, low density lipoproteins; HDL, high density lipoproteins; IDL, intermediate density lipoproteins; PE, phosphatidylethanolamine.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Immunometabolic correlation plots between a panel of cytokines/chemokines related with COVID-19 disease versus a set of metabolites and lipoproteins quantified in blood serum samples from COVID-19 patients. The plots represent the correlations from disease onset to up 3 months after infection. Negative correlations are coloured in red, while positive correlations are coloured in blue, as indicated in the figure legend. The calculations were performed in R.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Metabolites that are associated with severity prognosis of COVID-19, sorted according to the disease severity (arrow axis).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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