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https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2024.1341843/abstract
Metabolomic and immune alterations in long COVID patients with chronic fatigue syndrome
ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Viral Immunology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2024.1341843
This article is part of the Research Topic
Cross-Reactive Immunity and COVID-19
Suguru Saito1 Shima Shahbaz1 
Xian Luo1 
Mohammed Osman1 
Desiree Redmond1 
Jan Willem Cohen Tervaert1 
Liang Li1 
Shokrollah Elahi1*
The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.
A group of SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals present lingering symptoms, defined as long COVID (LC), that may last months or years post the onset of acute disease.
A portion of LC patients have symptoms similar to myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), which results in a substantial reduction in their quality of life.
A better understanding of the pathophysiology of LC, in particular, ME/CFS is urgently needed.
We identified and studied metabolites in LC individuals mainly exhibiting ME/CFS compared to age-sex-matched recovered individuals (R) without LC, acute COVID-19 patients (A), and to SARS-CoV-2 unexposed healthy individuals (HC).
Through these analyses, we identified alterations in several metabolomic pathways in LC vs other groups.
Plasma metabolomics analysis showed that LC differed from the R and HC groups.
Of note, the R group also exhibited a different metabolomic profile than HC. Moreover, we observed a significant elevation in the plasma proinflammatory biomarkers (e.g. IL-1a, IL-6, TNF-a, Flt-1, and sCD14) but the reduction in ATP in LC patients.
Our results demonstrate that LC patients exhibit persistent metabolomic abnormalities 12 months after the acute COVID-19 disease.
Of note, such metabolomic alterations can be observed in the R group 12 months after the acute disease.
Hence, the metabolomic recovery period for infected individuals with SARS-CoV-2 might be long-lasting.
In particular, we found a significant reduction in sarcosine and serine concentrations in LC patients, which was inversely correlated with depression, anxiety, and cognitive dysfunction scores.
Therefore, our study findings provide a comprehensive metabolomic knowledge base for a better understanding of the pathophysiology of LC and suggests sarcosine and serine supplementations might have potential therapeutic implications in LC patients.
Finally, our study reveals that LC disproportionally affects females more than males, as evidenced by nearly 70% of our LC patients being female.
Keywords: Sarcosine, Serine, soluble CD14, Depression, Cognitive Performance
Received: 21 Nov 2023; Accepted: 04 Jan 2024.
Metabolomic and immune alterations in long COVID patients with chronic fatigue syndrome
ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Viral Immunology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2024.1341843
This article is part of the Research Topic
Cross-Reactive Immunity and COVID-19
Suguru Saito1 Shima Shahbaz1 Xian Luo1 Mohammed Osman1 Desiree Redmond1 Jan Willem Cohen Tervaert1 Liang Li1 Shokrollah Elahi1*- 1University of Alberta, Canada
The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.
A group of SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals present lingering symptoms, defined as long COVID (LC), that may last months or years post the onset of acute disease.
A portion of LC patients have symptoms similar to myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), which results in a substantial reduction in their quality of life.
A better understanding of the pathophysiology of LC, in particular, ME/CFS is urgently needed.
We identified and studied metabolites in LC individuals mainly exhibiting ME/CFS compared to age-sex-matched recovered individuals (R) without LC, acute COVID-19 patients (A), and to SARS-CoV-2 unexposed healthy individuals (HC).
Through these analyses, we identified alterations in several metabolomic pathways in LC vs other groups.
Plasma metabolomics analysis showed that LC differed from the R and HC groups.
Of note, the R group also exhibited a different metabolomic profile than HC. Moreover, we observed a significant elevation in the plasma proinflammatory biomarkers (e.g. IL-1a, IL-6, TNF-a, Flt-1, and sCD14) but the reduction in ATP in LC patients.
Our results demonstrate that LC patients exhibit persistent metabolomic abnormalities 12 months after the acute COVID-19 disease.
Of note, such metabolomic alterations can be observed in the R group 12 months after the acute disease.
Hence, the metabolomic recovery period for infected individuals with SARS-CoV-2 might be long-lasting.
In particular, we found a significant reduction in sarcosine and serine concentrations in LC patients, which was inversely correlated with depression, anxiety, and cognitive dysfunction scores.
Therefore, our study findings provide a comprehensive metabolomic knowledge base for a better understanding of the pathophysiology of LC and suggests sarcosine and serine supplementations might have potential therapeutic implications in LC patients.
Finally, our study reveals that LC disproportionally affects females more than males, as evidenced by nearly 70% of our LC patients being female.
Keywords: Sarcosine, Serine, soluble CD14, Depression, Cognitive Performance
Received: 21 Nov 2023; Accepted: 04 Jan 2024.
