Abstract:
Objective To explore the correlation between serum lipid metabolism and immune function in tumor patients.
Methods A total of 214 cancer patients admitted to the Department of Oncology, Jinshan Hospital, Fudan University from July 2018 to April 2021 were selected as the research group and 105 non-cancer patients as the control group. Liquid mass spectrometry (LC-MS) was used to detect the targeted metabolomics of plasma from the two groups, and the differential lipid molecules were screened out. Flow cytometry was used to detect the levels of immune cells and cytokines in peripheral blood of the two groups, and the correlation between different lipid molecules and immune function indexes was analyzed.
Results A total of 37 metabolites were screened between the two groups, including phosphatidylcholine (PC), lyso phosphatidyl ethanolamine (LPE), phosphatidyl ethanolaminece (PE), diacylglycerol (DAG), sphingomyelin (SM) and triacylglycerol (TAG). Correlation analysis showed that PC, PE, CE, DAG, SM and TAG lipid molecules in serum were positively correlated with the number of central memory CD8+T cells, Th2 cells, Treg cells, memory Treg cell and CD16+NK cell, and negatively correlated with Th1 cell and naive Treg cell. LPE lipid molecules were positively correlated with effector CD8+T cells and Th1 cell, but negatively correlated with Th2 cell (P < 0.05).
Conclusions PC and CE are significantly up-regulated in the serum of tumor patients, while LPE, PE, DAG, SM and TAG are significantly down-regulated. These lipid molecules are significantly correlated with the number of lymphocyte subsets and the level of immune cytokines.