Plasma metabolic changes in Chinese HIV-infected patients receiving lopinavir/ritonavir based treatment: Implications for HIV precision therapy.

OBJECTIVES: The goal of this study is to profile the metabolic changes in the plasma of HIV patients receiving lopinavir/ritonavir (LPV/r)-based highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) relative to their treatment-naïve phase, aimed to identify precision therapy for HIV for improving prognosis and predicting dyslipidemia caused by LPV/r.

METHODS: 38 longitudinal plasma samples were collected from 19 HIV-infected patients both before and after antiretroviral therapy, and 18 samples from healthy individuals were used as controls. Untargeted metabolomics profiling of these plasma samples was performed using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS).

RESULTS: A total of 331 compounds of known identity were detected among these metabolites, a 67-metabolite signature mainly mapping to tryptophan, histidine, acyl carnitine, ketone bodies and fatty acid metabolism distinguished HIV patients from healthy controls. The levels of 19 out of the 67 altered metabolites including histidine, kynurenine, and 3-hydroxybutyrate (BHBA), recovered after LPV/r-based antiretroviral therapy, and histidine was positively correlated with the presence of CD4 + T lymphocytes. Furthermore, using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses, we discovered that butyrylcarnitine in combination with myristic acid from plasma in treatment-naïve patients could predict dyslipidemia caused by LPV/r with 87% accuracy.

CONCLUSIONS: Metabolites alterations in treatment-naïve HIV patients may indicate an inflammatory, oxidative state and mitochondrial dysfunction that is permissive for disease progression. Histidine may provide a specific protective function for HIV patients. Besides, elevated fatty acids levels including butyrylcarnitine and myristic acid after infection may indicate patients at risk of suffering from dyslipidemia after LPV/r-based HAART.