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Updated: Oct 7, 2025
Identification and Quantification of Deranged Metabolites in Critically Ill Patients Using NMR-Based Metabolomics
Published on: November 29, 2024
Proteomic profiling reveals a distinctive molecular signature for critically ill COVID-19 patients compared with
Zili Zhang1, Fanjie Lin1, Fei Liu2
1State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Diseases, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Vascular Diseases, National Clinical Research Center for Respiratory Diseases, Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Health, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China.
Objective:
The mortality rate for critically ill COVID-19 cases was more than 80%. Nonetheless, research about the effect of common respiratory diseases on critically ill COVID-19 expression and outcomes is scarce.
Design:
We performed proteomic analyses on airway mucus obtained by bronchoscopy from patients with severe COVID-19, or induced sputum from patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, and healthy controls.
Results:
Of the total identified and quantified proteins, 445 differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) were found in different comparison groups. In comparison with COPD, asthma, and controls, 11 proteins were uniquely present in COVID-19 patients. Apart from DEPs associated with COPD versus controls and asthma versus controls, there was a total of 59 DEPs specific to COVID-19 patients. Finally, the findings revealed that there were 8 overlapping proteins in COVID-19 patients, including C9, FGB, FGG, PRTN3, HBB, HBA1, IGLV3-19, and COTL1. Functional analyses revealed that most of them were associated with complement and coagulation cascades, platelet activation, or iron metabolism, and anemia-related pathways.
Conclusions:
This study provides fundamental data for identifying COVID-19-specific proteomic changes in comparison with COPD and asthma, which may suggest molecular targets for specialized therapy.
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