Metabolic profiling for water-soluble metabolites in patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls in a Chinese population: A case-control study

Abstract

Objectives: Objective measures integrated with clinical symptoms may improve early prevention and detection of schizophrenia. Herein we aim to evaluate potential water-soluble metabolic biomarkers in schizophrenia.

Methods: We recruited adults with schizophrenia (n = 113) who had not received pharmacological treatment for at least 1 month prior to enrollment and 111 age- and sex-matched healthy subjects from Weifang, Shandong province, China. All serum samples were analysed using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry coupled with a hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography column.

Results: Eleven metabolites, namely carnitines (oleoylcarnitine, l-palmitoylcarnitine, 9-decenoylcarnitine and 2-trans,4-cis-decadienoylcarnitine), polar lipids (lysophosphatidylcholine (LPC)(P-16:0), LPC (16:0), LPC (15:0) and LPC(14:0)), amino acids (taurine and l-arginine), and organic acid (2,5-dichloro-4-oxohex-2-enedioate), separated the patients and healthy controls. Compared with healthy controls, taurine, l-palmitoylcarnitine and oleoylcarnitine levels were higher, whereas the remaining eight metabolites were lower in patients with schizophrenia. A combination of four metabolites, i.e., oleoylcarnitine, 9-decenoylcarnitine, LPC (15:0) and LPC (14:0), provided the most robust between-group separation.

Conclusions: This study appears to distinguish between groups of patients and controls, which should be considered as a contribution to putative potential biomarkers. The water-soluble metabolites were determined to be significantly different between the groups in the current study, and were primarily related to cellular bioenergetics, notably oxidative stress.

Keywords:

• Schizophrenia
• psychosis
• biomarkers
• metabolomics
• liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Beijing Omics Bio-tech Co., Ltd, for their kind help in data collection for this study. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper. We thank team members for their support and contributions to this study.

Contributors

JYW and BC conceived and designed the study; BC and DFW collected the data and performed the statistical analysis; BC, ZHP, RSMcI, EB, JYW and DFW contributed to the discussion; JYW, ZHP, RSMcI, EB and MS revised the paper. All authors have read and approved the final version of this article.

Institutional review board statement

This study was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Review Committee of Public Health at Peking University Health Science Centre (IRB00001052-14071).

Statement of interest

None to declare.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Peking University Health Science Centre Medical Cross Disciplinary Fund [BMU20140435]. The supporting foundation had no involvement in study design, the collection, analysis, or interpretation of data, writing of the report; or in the decision to submit the article for publication.