The following is a summary of “Plasma Metabolomics Reveals Systemic Metabolic Alterations of Subclinical and Clinical Hypothyroidism,” published in the January 2023 issue of Endocrinology & Metabolism by Shao, et al.
Although subclinical hypothyroidism (SCH) and clinical hypothyroidism (CH) have been connected to a number of metabolic comorbidities, the underlying metabolic changes were unknown. Molecular insights into the pathogenesis of hypothyroidism may be obtained by metabolomics. For a study, researchers investigated the metabolic changes in SCH & CH and discovered promising metabolite indicators for separating SCH & CH from euthyroid people.
High-resolution mass spectrometry-based metabolomics was used to evaluate plasma samples from a cohort of 126 human participants, comprising 45 patients with CH, 41 patients with SCH, and 40 euthyroid controls. Data were analyzed using orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis and multivariate principal component analysis. In addition, a multivariate linear regression analysis was used to do the correlation study. Three machine learning models and an unbiased variable selection technique in R were used to create prediction models based on putative metabolite biomarkers.
While the metabolite changes between the SCH and CH groups were very comparable, the plasma metabolomic patterns in the SCH and CH groups were considerably different from those of the control groups. According to a pathway enrichment study, SCH and CH significantly influenced the production of main bile acids, steroid hormones, lysine degradation, tryptophan metabolism, and purine metabolism. Significant correlations were discovered between 65 metabolites and thyrotropin, free thyroxine, thyroid peroxidase antibody, or thyroglobulin antibody levels. 17 metabolic indicators were effectively chosen and verified to distinguish 3 groups.
It was possible to create diagnostic models based on specific metabolites using metabolomics in conjunction with machine learning algorithms since SCH and CH had dramatically changed metabolic patterns linked to hypothyroidism.