Up-Regulation of Specific Bioactive Lipids in Celiac Disease
Celiac disease (CD) is an autoimmune enteropathy linked to alterations of metabolism. Currently, limited untargeted metabolomic studies evaluating differences in the plasma metabolome of CD subjects have been documented. We engage in a metabolomic study that analyzes plasma metabolome in 17 children with CD treated with a gluten-free diet and 17 healthy control siblings in order to recognize potential changes in metabolic networks. Our data demonstrates the persistence of metabolic defects in CD subjects in spite of the dietary treatment, affecting a minor but significant fraction (around 4%, 209 out of 4893 molecular features) of the analyzed plasma metabolome. The affected molecular species are mainly, but not exclusively, lipid species with a particular affectation of steroids and derivatives (indicating an adrenal gland affectation), glycerophospholipids (to highlight phosphatidic acid), glycerolipids (with a special affectation of diacylglycerols), and fatty acyls (eicosanoids). Our findings are suggestive of an activation of the diacylglycerol-phosphatidic acid signaling pathway in CD that may potentially have detrimental effects via activation of several targets including protein kinases such as mTOR, which could be the basis of the morbidity and mortality connected with untreated CD. However, more studies are necessary to validate this idea regarding CD. ; This research was funded by the Regional Government of Andalusia, Excellence Research (Project No P12-AGR-2581); by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities (Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, RTI2018-099200-BI00); by the Generalitat of Catalonia: Agency for Management of University and Research Grants (2017SGR696); and by the Department of Health (SLT002/16/00250) to R.P. This study was co-financed by FEDER funds from the European Union ("A way to build Europe"). IRBLleida is a CERCA Programme/Generalitat of Catalonia. The study was also partially funded by the grant "Investigation grant program by the Association of Celiacs and Sensitive to Gluten of the Community of Madrid".