Department of Neurology, the University of Texas McGovern Medical School at Houston, Houston, TX, USA.
The University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, TX, USA.
Cell Death Dis. 2022 May 14;13(5):461. doi: 10.1038/s41419-022-04861-2.
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), caused by SARS-CoV-2, leads to symptoms ranging from asymptomatic disease to death. Although males are more susceptible to severe symptoms and higher mortality due to COVID-19, patient sex has rarely been examined. Sex-associated metabolic changes may implicate novel biomarkers and therapeutic targets to treat COVID-19. Here, using serum samples, we performed global metabolomic analyses of uninfected and SARS-CoV-2-positive male and female patients with severe COVID-19. Key metabolic pathways that demonstrated robust sex differences in COVID-19 groups, but not in controls, involved lipid metabolism, pentose pathway, bile acid metabolism, and microbiome-related metabolism of aromatic amino acids, including tryptophan and tyrosine. Unsupervised statistical analysis showed a profound sexual dimorphism in correlations between patient-specific clinical parameters and their global metabolic profiles. Identification of sex-specific metabolic changes in severe COVID-19 patients is an important knowledge source for researchers striving for development of potential sex-associated biomarkers and druggable targets for COVID-19 patients.
新型冠状病毒病（COVID-19）由 SARS-CoV-2 引起，可导致从无症状疾病到死亡等各种症状。尽管男性因 COVID-19 而更容易出现严重症状和更高的死亡率，但很少有研究检查过患者的性别。与性别相关的代谢变化可能暗示了治疗 COVID-19 的新型生物标志物和治疗靶点。在这里，我们使用血清样本，对感染 SARS-CoV-2 的重症 COVID-19 男性和女性患者以及未感染者进行了全面的代谢组学分析。在 COVID-19 组中表现出明显性别差异但在对照组中没有的关键代谢途径涉及脂质代谢、戊糖途径、胆汁酸代谢和与芳香族氨基酸（包括色氨酸和酪氨酸）相关的微生物组代谢。无监督统计分析显示，患者特定临床参数与其整体代谢谱之间的相关性存在明显的性别二态性。确定重症 COVID-19 患者中的性别特异性代谢变化，是研究人员努力开发 COVID-19 患者潜在的与性别相关的生物标志物和可用药靶点的重要知识来源。
