Metabolomic profiling of ascending thoracic aortic aneurysms and dissections - Implications for pathophysiology and biomarker discovery

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0176727
• Publication Date: 2017-05-03T17:31:47Z
• Authors: Christian Doppler; Kathrin Arnhard; Julia Dumfarth; Katharina Heinz; Barbara Messner; Christian Stern; Therese Koal; Kristaps Klavins; Katarina Danzl; Florian Pitterl; Michael Grimm; Herbert Oberacher; David Bernhard
• Keywords: Thoracic aortic aneurysm; Pathogenesis; Pathophysiology

Our basic understanding of ascending thoracic aortic aneurysm (ATAA) pathogenesis is still very limited, hampering early diagnosis, risk prediction, and development treatment options. "Omics"-technologies, ideal to reveal tissue alterations from the normal physiological state due disease have hardly been applied in field. Using a metabolomic approach, with this study authors seek define differences between controls various forms ATAAs.Using targeted FIA-MS/MS metabolomics we analysed compared metabolic profiles wall age-matched (n = 8), bicuspid valve-associated aneurysms (BAV-A; n 9), tricuspid (TAV-A; 14), dissections (TAV-Diss; 6).With sphingomyelin (SM) (OH) C22:2, SM C18:1, C22:1, C24:1 only 4 out 92 detectable metabolites differed significantly BAV-A samples. Between TAV-Diss samples phosphatidylcholine (PC) ae C32:1 differed. Importantly, our analyses revealed general increase amount total levels controls.Significantly increased sphingomyelins may argue for repression sphingomyelinase activity sphingomyelinase-ceramide pathway, which result an inhibition regeneration; potential basis initiation progression.