Scientific article
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English

New metabolic signature for Chagas disease reveals sex steroid perturbation in humans and mice

Published inHeliyon, vol. 8, no. 12, e12380
Publication date2022-12
Abstract

The causative agent of Chagas disease (CD), Trypanosoma cruzi, claims thousands of lives each year. Current diagnostic tools are insufficient to ensure parasitological detection in chronically infected patients has been achieved. A host-derived metabolic signature able to distinguish CD patients from uninfected individuals and assess antiparasitic treatment efficiency is introduced. Serum samples were collected from chronic CD patients, prior to and three years after treatment, and subjected to untargeted metabolomics analysis against demographically matched CD-negative controls. Five metabolites were confirmed by high-resolution tandem mass spectrometry. Several database matches for sex steroids were significantly altered in CD patients. A murine experiment corroborated sex steroid perturbation in T. cruzi-infected mice, particularly in male animals. Proteomics analysis also found increased steroidogenesis in the testes of infected mice. Metabolic alterations identified in this study shed light on the pathogenesis and provide the basis for developing novel assays for the diagnosis and screening of CD patients.

Keywords
  • Biomarker discovery
  • Chagas disease
  • Glutamine
  • Mass spectrometry
  • Metabolomics
  • Mouse model
  • Phenylalanyl-threonine
  • Proteomics
  • Pyroglutamyl-glycine
  • Sex steroids
  • Taurine
  • Testis
  • Testosterone
  • Trypanosoma cruzi
Citation (ISO format)
GOLIZEH, Makan et al. New metabolic signature for Chagas disease reveals sex steroid perturbation in humans and mice. In: Heliyon, 2022, vol. 8, n° 12, p. e12380. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e12380
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Article (Published version)
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Identifiers
ISSN of the journal2405-8440
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