Metabolomic approach to profile functional and metabolic changes in heart failure

Heart failure (HF) is characterized by a series of adaptive changes in energy metabolism. The use of metabolomics enables the parallel assessment of a wide range of metabolites. In this study, we appraised whether metabolic changes correlate with HF severity, assessed as an impairment of functional contractility, and attempted to interpret the role of metabolic changes in determining systolic dysfunction.

A 500 MHz proton nuclear magnetic resonance ((1)H-NMR)-based analysis was performed on blood samples from three groups of individuals: 9 control subjects (Group A), 9 HF patients with mild to moderate impairment of left ventricle ejection fraction (LVEF: 41.9 ± 4.0 %; Group B), and 15 HF patients with severe LVEF impairment (25.3 ± 10.3 %; Group C). In order to create a descriptive model of HF, a supervised orthogonal projection on latent structures discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) was applied using speckle tracking-derived longitudinal strain rate as the Y-variable in the multivariate analysis.

OPLS-DA identified three metabolic clusters related to the studied groups achieving good values for R(2) [R(2)(X) = 0.64; R(2)(Y) = 0.59] and Q(2) (0.39). The most important metabolites implicated in the clustering were 2-hydroxybutyrate, glycine, methylmalonate, and myo-inositol.

The results demonstrate the suitability of metabolomics in combination with functional evaluation techniques in HF staging. This innovative tool should facilitate investigation of perturbed metabolic pathways in HF and their correlation with the impairment of myocardial function.