Abstract: Objective
To analyze the plasma metabolomics of patients with occupational silicosis, and screen the differential
Methods
metabolic pathways in different stages of silicosis. Thirty patients with occupational silicosis were selected as
silicosis group by judgment sampling method, including 10 patients in each subgroups with silicosis at stages Ⅰ, Ⅱ, and Ⅲ.
Another 10 healthy individuals without occupational dust exposure history were selected as the control group. Plasma of each
patientwascollected.Themetabolitesfromtheirplasmasampleswerecollectedandidentifiedbyuntargetedmetabolomicsusing----ultraperformanceliquidchromatographyquadrupoletimeofflightmassspectrometry.Principalcomponentanalysisandpartial
least square discriminant analysis were used to compare the differentially expressed metabolites. The metabolic pathways
Results
enrichment analysis was performed using MetaboAnanlyst 5.0 and other metabolic analysis software. There were
significantlydifferentmetabolicprofilesamongtheplasmaofthesilicosissubgroupsandthecontrolgroup.Inthepositivemode,--149differentmetaboliteswerescreened,amongwhich99metaboliteswereupregulatedand50metabolitesweredown
regulated. Sphingolipids metabolism, arginine and ornithine metabolism, and fatty acid degradation are the main metabolic
pathwaysinsilicosissubgroupswithstagesⅠandⅡcomparedwiththecontrolgroup.Themetabolicpathwaysofsilicosisstage
Ⅲ are arginine and proline metabolism, glycerol metabolism, glyoxylic acid and dicarboxylic acid metabolism, and glycine,
Conclusion
serine and threonine metabolism. The plasma metabolic profile of patients with silicosis in different stages
changed significantly. Sphingolipid metabolism is the main metabolic pathway in the early and middle stages of silicosis. In
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silicosisterminalstage,thechangeofarginineandproline basedmetabolicpathwayresultinginfibrosisaggravation.