Study On Metabolomics Of Serum And Saliva In Patients With Oral Lichen Planus

AimsIn this study,metabolomic methods were used to screen and compare the differential metabolites in serum and saliva of patients with oral lichen planus(OLP)and healthy subjects,to find endogenous metabolic biomarkers in serum and saliva for the diagnosis of OLP,to put forward a new method for clinical diagnosis of OLP,and to explore the metabolic disorder mechanism of OLP from the metabolic level.MethodsSerum and saliva samples were collected from 120 OLP patients and 125 healthy subjects.UHPLC-Q-Orbitrap HRMS(Ultra-performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole/orbitrap high resolution mass spectrometry)was used to analyze the metabolites in serum and saliva samples of patients with OLP and healthy subjects.Combined with bioinformatics methods,a non-targeted metabonomic analysis method for potential endogenous metabolic biomarkers in patients with OLP was established to explore the potential pathogenesis of OLP from the metabolic level.Results1.Based on the UHPLC-Q-Orbitrap HRMS analysis platform,a method for the detection of serum metabolites in patients with OLP and healthy subjects was established.A total of 23 differential metabolites were identified,including 10 lipid metabolites such as LysoPEs,5-Aminopentanamide,Eicosapentaenoic acid,8 amino acid metabolites such as Glutamic acid,Taurine,Pyroglutamic acid,Acetyl L-carnitine,and 4 other metabolites such as Hypoxanthine,3-Indoxyl sulphate and Sphingosine 1-phosphate.After adjusting the 4 potential risk factors of smoking history,prefer scalding food,lack of exercise,and poor sleep by binary Logistic regression analysis,it was found that 23 metabolites identified in serum samples were still strongly correlated with OLP.2.According to the order of VIP(Variable importance in projection),ROC(the area under the)curve and the comparison of clinical application,it is found that the combination of Glutamic acid,LysoPE(18:0)and Taurine is an ideal diagnostic model for the diagnosis of OLP,and its AUC,sensitivity and specificity are 0.938,90.5%and 84.4%,respectively.Based on the highest predictive sensitivity and specificity of ROC,0.461 was selected as the best cut-off value to distinguish OLP from healthy controls.The cutoff value is used to distinguish different groups in the test set,and the diagnostic accuracy is 86.1%.3.Based on the enrichment of metabolic pathways identified by differential metabolites in the serum of patients with OLP,it was found that the metabolic pathways including Taurine and hypotaurine metabolism,Alanine,aspartate and glutamate metabolism,Arginine and proline metabolism,Glutamine and glutamate metabolism and Aminoacyl-tRNA biosynthesis etc.4.Based on the UHPLC-Q-Orbitrap HRMS analysis platform,a method for the detection of saliva metabolites in patients with OLP and healthy subjects was established.A total of 19 differential metabolites were identified,including 6 amino acid metabolites such as Glutamic acid,Pyroglutamic acid and Citric aicd,2 carnitines,2 lipid metabolites and 9 other metabolites such as Hypoxanthine.Orthophosphate and Creatine.After adjusting the 4 potential risk factors of smoking history,prefer scalding food,lack of exercise,and poor sleep by binary Logistic regression analysis,it was found that 19 metabolites identified in saliva samples were still strongly correlated with OLP.5.Based on the enrichment of metabolic pathways identified by differential metabolites in the saliva of patients with OLP,it was found that the metabolic pathways including D-Glutamine and D-glutamate metabolism,Taurine and hypotaurine metabolism,Arginine and proline metabolism,Alanine,aspartate and glutamate metabolism,Arginine biosynthesis,Glycerophospholipid metabolism etc.4.7 different metabolites were found in both serum samples and saliva samples,namely Glutamic acid,Pyroglutamic acid,Taurine,Uric acid,Citric acid,Acetyl L-carnitine and Hypoxanthine.This suggested that metabolic changes in saliva samples might reflect systemic metabolic conditions to some extent.ConclusionsBased on the potential biomarkers discovered and identified by metabolomics technology,it shows a good diagnostic potential for OLP and provides new ideas and new methods for clinical accurate diagnosis of OLP patients.Metabolomics can be used to characterize the characteristics of metabolic disorders in patients with OLP,which is helpful to reveal the occurrence and development mechanism of OLP.