Novel lipid biomarkers may make early detection of endometriosis possible

Novel lipid biomarkers may make early detection of endometriosis possible

Key Points

Highlights:

• Researchers aim to discover new biomarkers for the early detection of endometriosis.

Key Results:

• 21 patients with laparoscopic and hysteroscopic diagnosed endometriosis and 20 women without endometriosis were included in the study.
• Researchers sought to analyze the presence of different Phosphatidic Acid (PA), Phosphatidylcholine (PC), and Phosphatidylserine (PS) metabolites in these two groups.
• Endometrial tissue was found to have a distinct lipid profile that contained unique lipids. Of note, PA (25:5/22:6) was found to vary the greatest between the two study groups.

What’s done here?

• This study has found that specific lipid metabolites including PA, PC, and PS alterations are associated with stage I–II endometriosis using mass spectrometry-based metabolomics.

Limitations:

• A more extensive study analyzing the lipid metabolomics of endometriosis is needed to confirm the results of this study.

Lay Summary

Currently, specific clinical diagnostic indicators for the early detection of endometriosis have not been found with enough specificity and sensitivity for widespread use. Novel diagnostic biomarkers are needed that are both effective and non-invasive to detect endometriosis as early as possible. In this paper, authors investigate alterations in the lipid profile of endometriotic lesions using ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography with electrospray ionization high-resolution mass spectrometry (UHPLC- ESI-HR-MS).

21 patients with laparoscopic and hysteroscopic diagnosed endometriosis were included in the study while 20 infertile women were added as the control. Eutopic endometrial tissue was then obtained from both patient populations and analyzed by plotting three-dimensional data composed of m/z-values, retention times (a marker of a specific lipid metabolite), and peak areas. Differences in lipid metabolites between endometriosis and control tissue were plotted, and potential markers were analyzed using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) and area under the curve (AUC) parameters. This information was then used to distinguish lipids that are either high or low in sensitivity and specificity.

Researchers found many differences in the peak intensities detected at the same retention times between tissues obtained from patients with and without endometriosis.

Endometrial tissue was found to have a distinct lipid profile that contained mostly the following lipid levels: PC (18:1/22:6), PC (20:1/14:1), PC (20:3/20:4), PA (25:5/22:6), and PS (20:3/23:1). Specifically, PA (25:5/22:6) levels were much higher in tissues obtained from the endometriosis group than the control. The AUC of ROC curve for the complete model predicting early endometriosis was 0.871 with a sensitivity of 0.905 and specificity of 0.750.

Based on their analysis, researchers claim that these lipid metabolites could be potential markers of endometriosis.

Research Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29410629