Members of the NMR International COVID-19 Research Network have published grounding breaking research showing how NMR spectroscopy has played a key role in our growing understanding of the long-term systemic effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection, using metabolic phenotyping. Listen to Prof. Julien Wist as he is discussing about how NMR can contribute.
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Abstract written by Professor Julien Wist (Professor of Computational Spectroscopy at the ANPC)
The biological processes behind the response of patients to infection by SARS-CoV-2 are not fully understood. Applying a broad phenotypic approach on a longitudinal cohort enabled the identification of key markers associated with 1) the onset of the acute phase (phenoconversion) and posterior normalisation process (phenoreversion), 2) the risk of death and 3) the risk of developing post-acute covid syndrome – PACS or long-COVID. The phenotypic profiles included clinical, immune and inflammation parameters along with glycoproteins, lipoproteins, and other small molecular weight metabolites. The cohort was carefully stratified according to the severity of the respiratory symptoms.
Our results indicate that regardless of respiratory symptoms and their severity a disturbance to the metabolic signature could be observed. Moreover, 3 sub-phenotypes (mildly affected; severely affected but recovering; not recovering) could be identified at the onset of the disease that relate with both the respiratory severity and the prospect of recovery. Other metabolic markers which were perturbed could be linked to brain metabolism and associated to patients experiencing neurological symptoms 6 months post infection. Similarly, markers for cardiovascular risks were elevated in acute patients, a warning of future complications that certainly explains the excess cardiovascular risk burden observed in population infected by SARS-CoV-2.
Interestingly, a high degree of covariance was found between standard clinical parameters such as CRP and parameters from the distinct panels, meaning that surrogate markers could be used. Indeed, lipoprotein and glycoprotein parameters are accurate predictors of the disease outcome and of cardiovascular risk. These parameters are readily obtained from NMR experiments acquired in <10 minutes, with minimal and non-destructive sample preparation. With an ongoing pandemic and a large portion of the world population already affected, it is timely to expand our testing capability to monitoring the recovery (phenoreversion).
NMR* scientists
Researchers studying COVID 19 disease
Clinical trial investigators
Clinicians.
* Bruker NMR Instruments are for Research Use Only. Not for Use in Clinical Diagnostic Procedures
Julien Wist
Professor of Computational Spectroscopy | Deputy Director of the Center for Computational & Systems Medicine