Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine, School of Medicine, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA; Malaria Host-Pathogen Interaction Center, Atlanta, GA, USA.
Malaria Host-Pathogen Interaction Center, Atlanta, GA, USA; International Center for Malaria Research, Education and Development, Emory Vaccine Center, Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA.
Int J Med Microbiol. 2017 Dec;307(8):533-541. doi: 10.1016/j.ijmm.2017.09.002. Epub 2017 Sep 6.
Plasmodium vivax is one of the leading causes of malaria worldwide. Infections with this parasite cause diverse clinical manifestations, and recent studies revealed that infections with P. vivax can result in severe and fatal disease. Despite these facts, biological traits of the host response and parasite metabolism during P. vivax malaria are still largely underexplored. Parasitemia is clearly related to progression and severity of malaria caused by P. falciparum, however the effects of parasitemia during infections with P. vivax are not well understood.
We conducted an exploratory study using a high-resolution metabolomics platform that uncovered significant associations between parasitemia levels and plasma metabolites from 150 patients with P. vivax malaria. Most plasma metabolites were inversely associated with higher levels of parasitemia. Top predicted metabolites are implicated into pathways of heme and lipid metabolism, which include biliverdin, bilirubin, palmitoylcarnitine, stearoylcarnitine, phosphocholine, glycerophosphocholine, oleic acid and omega-carboxy-trinor-leukotriene B4.
The abundance of several plasma metabolites varies according to the levels of parasitemia in patients with P. vivax malaria. Moreover, our data suggest that the host response and/or parasite survival might be affected by metabolites involved in the degradation of heme and metabolism of several lipids. Importantly, these data highlight metabolic pathways that may serve as targets for the development of new antimalarial compounds.
间日疟原虫是世界范围内导致疟疾的主要病原体之一。这种寄生虫的感染会引起多种临床表现，最近的研究表明，间日疟原虫感染也可能导致严重和致命的疾病。尽管如此，宿主对间日疟原虫感染的反应和寄生虫代谢的生物学特征仍在很大程度上尚未得到充分探索。寄生虫血症与恶性疟原虫引起的疟疾的进展和严重程度明显相关，但寄生虫血症在间日疟原虫感染中的影响尚不清楚。
我们使用高分辨率代谢组学平台进行了一项探索性研究，该研究揭示了 150 例间日疟患者的寄生虫血症水平与血浆代谢物之间存在显著关联。大多数血浆代谢物与寄生虫血症水平呈负相关。预测的主要代谢物与血红素和脂质代谢途径有关，包括胆红素、胆绿素、棕榈酰肉碱、硬脂酰肉碱、磷酸胆碱、甘油磷酸胆碱、油酸和ω-羧基-三nor-白三烯 B4。
间日疟患者的寄生虫血症水平与几种血浆代谢物的丰度有关。此外，我们的数据表明，宿主反应和/或寄生虫的存活可能受到血红素降解和几种脂质代谢相关代谢物的影响。重要的是，这些数据突出了可能成为开发新抗疟化合物的靶标的代谢途径。
