Diferential diagnosis by CSF metab.: MS vs encephalomyelitis

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frodo
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Diferential diagnosis by CSF metab.: MS vs encephalomyelitis

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This is specially important to avoid misdiagnosis but also to elucidate pathogenesis.

NMR metabolomics of cerebrospinal fluid differentiates inflammatory diseases of the central nervous system

https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/arti ... td.0007045

Discussion

NMR metabolomics distinguished infectious and inflammatory disorders using laboratory-confirmed samples of 5 disorders using 2 approaches to normalization of the data, and 2 unsupervised cluster analytical approaches. CART decision analysis easily differentiated bacterial (Lyme), fungal (Histoplasma) and viral (WNV) causes of encephalomyelitis from controls. Decision analysis also differentiated rabies and the prodromal form of MS from controls, while separation by cluster analyses was incomplete between MS and controls. Notably, the greatest source of variation in metabolomics data found by PCA was the presence or absence of an infectious pathogen. If replicated, this finding is of paramount clinical impact because treatments for infections require almost polar opposite therapeutics than those for autoimmune diseases. There was also substantial agreement in the identification of influential metabolites between different approaches to data normalization and reduction and predictive approaches, including CART and random forest analysis. Metabolites driving separation in PCA (pyruvate, glutamate, quinolinate, 2-oxoglutarate, carnitine, and glycine) potentially suggest alterations in energy metabolism, excitotoxicity and antioxidant response. Patterns of these metabolites were not uniform. Rather, overlapping as well as distinguishing metabolic features were seen, highlighting the potential utility of measuring a suite of metabolites rather than searching for individual metabolic biomarkers for diseases, which may not exist. Overlap of profiles makes strong clinical sense given that EM syndromes overlap in signs and symptoms. The overlap also supports a clinical rationale for syndromic metabolic therapies across a range of infectious or autoimmune causes of EM. Distinguishing features provide promise of rapid, relatively specific diagnoses that enable prompt pathogen or process-directed therapies.

Significant differences by disease group were found in the CSF concentrations of several metabolites known to be involved in the synthesis of the antioxidant glutathione (GSH) and related pathways, including glycine, formate, pyroglutamate, and 2-hydroxybutyrate. The transsulfuration pathway links the methylation cycle of one carbon metabolism to GSH synthesis and produces 2-hydroxybutyrate as a secondary byproduct during the conversion of cystathionine to cysteine [35, 36]. Formate, an endogenous and bacterial metabolite that along with glycine was found at significantly higher levels in WNV and Lyme disease patients compared to controls in this study, is formed as a byproduct in several pathways including the tryptophan kynurenine pathway [37], pterin metabolism [38] and protein demethylation (following hypermethylation by S-adenosyl-L-methionine [39]), while it is also consumed in the folate cycle during the conversion of tetrahydrofolate (THF) to 10-formyl-THF [40]. An end product of purine catabolism, neopterin, has been found to be elevated in patients with rabies [41], Lyme disease, and other neuroinfections, while remaining low in MS and other neuroinflammatory conditions [42]. Pyroglutamate, which converts to glutamate before being incorporated into GSH and also activates amino acid transport systems at the blood brain barrier [43], was higher in histoplasmosis, Lyme disease and WNV and was an important predictor distinguishing these conditions from control samples. Given individual metabolites can participate in a number of biochemical pathways, further studies are required to parse out the mechanisms at play in the diseases studied here. A likely interpretation is that infection or inflammation in the CNS is associated with redox imbalances including glutathione metabolism and NADH/NAD+ ratios. It is of particular interest that these metabolites may profile mechanisms leading to insulin resistance and vascular disease [36], given that low dose insulin therapy was added to the Milwaukee protocol, version 4, with statistical improvements in survival [44].

Our analytical design sought to minimize the effects of starvation/ketosis and dehydration/uremia on the metabolic profile of rabies by prioritizing rabies samples taken four days after admission. Nevertheless, PCA analysis identified the importance of ketone bodies in identifying rabies. Factor analysis that deliberately excluded primary ketones, urea and creatinine from analysis still identified isopropanol and methanol (Table 3), both downstream metabolites of ketones, as discriminators of rabies. RF and CART analyses also identified ketones and carnitine (fatty acid oxidation) as predictors of rabies but not other infections (Table 5). Despite our experimental design, CNS ketosis may be a valid indicator of rabies encephalitis.

This study was originally intended to further explore the specificity of NMR metabolomics for the diagnosis of rabies, which is often confused with Guillain-Barre syndrome, acute psychosis and N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) encephalitis and currently requires multiple tests for diagnosis at remote reference laboratories. Our findings suggest that the utility of the approach may instead lie in excluding competing diagnoses, many of which are more treatable. NMR metabolomics performed on a par with current rabies diagnostics (100% sensitivity, 76% specificity) and is likely complementary (particularly after 5 days). When restricted to the first week of hospitalization with rabies (when most patients die), NMR metabolomics did not perform as well as for other infections; gene expression studies of rabies CSF and detection of rabies-specific antibodies also performed poorly in the first week. Rabies can clearly be delineated from controls by NMR at later time points, and NMR of CSF also measures recovery [12]. The promise of an NMR metabolomics profile as a proxy marker for therapeutic response would be welcome for rabies, WNV, NMDAR encephalitis or acute disseminated encephalomyelitis for which efficacious treatments remain undefined.

This study is exploratory and is limited by the number of samples available for CNS diseases of rare incidence. The possibility of confounding effects of age, sex, disease stage, or other acute variations in metabolic processes should be considered in interpreting these results. Our control group was aged 5–20 years, while ages in the disease group ranged from 4 to 83 years. However, we confirmed that the distribution of metabolites of our controls overlapped with adult norms reported by the international Human Metabolomics Database (www.hmdb.ca). Further, clear inter-disease differences within groups of adult diseases (MS, WNV) were evident in PCA (Fig 2), suggesting disease was much more influential in driving variation than was age. Sensitivity analyses in rabies in a larger dataset [12] did not identify meaningful age differences, although we cannot exclude the possibility that this might occur for other inflammatory diseases of the CNS. Another potential source of confounding is the timing of sample collection, which was not precisely known for samples other than rabies. All forms of encephalitis are treated empirically upon hospitalization, so early diagnostic samples such as those analyzed here may reflect early empirical therapies that often overlap (e.g., rehydration, provision of glucose, use of antibacterials, sedation) but may also differ between diseases. Our choice of rabies samples centered on the fourth day of hospitalization was intended to minimize effects of dehydration and malnutrition, but may have biased rabies samples toward normality. Finally, differences in some metabolites should be interpreted with caution, since low concentrations in some specimens precluded exact quantification (carnitine and glycine), which may have artificially led to statistical differences. Other metabolites (glutamine and pyroglutamate) are potentially affected by protein removal [45], although this has not been shown in CSF.

This study provides justification for further analysis of samples from these and other causes of encephalomyelitis.

Several prominent and as of yet unidentified peaks observed in the spectra of some patients may indicate the presence of important metabolites involved in disease pathogenesis that have not yet been elucidated. While further studies with larger sample sizes will be needed to determine the clinical utility of NMR in the diagnosis of EM, NMR or other ‘omics technologies may in the future serve as a rapid initial screening test that would allow medical practitioners to initiate treatment with antivirals or biological immune modifiers, while patient samples can then be triaged to appropriate reference laboratories for confirmation without delaying treatment.

Rabies and many arbovirus reference laboratories require specialized containment facilities, immunization of laboratory workers, and highly trained personnel who perform subjective assays such as immunofluorescence. Reference laboratories for rabies, arboviruses, bacteria and fungi are often dispersed geographically, leading to substantial requirements in volume, delay, and cost for diagnosis of encephalomyelitis when all are considered. NMR and MS instruments, on the other hand, exist at most research universities, i.e. at a state or provincial rather than national level. NMR analytical procedures are easily standardized and permit detection of multiple diseases using a single experiment, as illustrated here. NMR spectra can be transmitted electronically for analysis, which can be automated [46]. Decision analytical approaches such as CART and RF offer diagnostic flow charts that are easily implemented once validated, with quantifiable diagnostic probabilities. Considering current challenges, its relative ease of use makes NMR metabolomics of CSF a potentially important tool for emergent diseases and distinguishing between autoimmune and infectious EM.


Also interesting:

Increased CSF sulfatide levels and serum glycosphingolipid antibody levels in healthy siblings of multiple sclerosis patients

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 0X13000087

A proportion of healthy siblings of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients have an oligoclonal immunological reaction in their cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) termed the “MS oligoclonal trait”. The CSF levels of the major myelin glycosphingolipid sulfatide and serum antibodies against the glycosphingolipids sulfatide and galactosylceramide were recently reported to be increased in MS patients. We studied the levels of these substances in pairs of 46 patients and their 46 healthy siblings and 50 unrelated healthy blood donors (HBD). The sulfatide concentration in CSF was assayed by thin layer chromatography and immunostaining, and the concentration of galactosylceramide by densitometry after thin layer chromatography. Anti-glycosphingolipid antibody levels were assayed by ELISA. In the healthy siblings, the CSF sulfatide concentrations were markedly increased (p < 0.001, age adjusted p = 0.025), and the serum IgM anti-GalCer antibodies were increased in healthy siblings compared with HBD (p = 0.02). The increased sulfatide or antibody levels did not co-segregate with the “MS oligoclonal trait” or the HLA-DR15 phenotype. In conclusion, a proportion of healthy siblings of MS patients have increased CSF sulfatide and anti-glycosphingolipid antibody levels, which may, analogous to the “MS oligoclonal trait”, constitute an “MS glycosphingolipid endophenotype”. Endophenotypes could potentially simplify the genetics of complex disorders.
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