Metabolomic profile related to cardiovascular disease in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus: A pilot study

•We examine metabolomic changes in T2DM patients with or not CVD and controls.•We found changes in phospholipid profile in T2DM patients and T2DM patients with CVD.•Early diagnosis of vascular complications associated with type 2 diabetes mellitus.•Diagnosis by non invasive and simple techniques.•Possible therapeutic targets to improve the quality of life and survival in T2DM.

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) that represents one of the main causes of mortality in this population. The knowledge of the underlie factors involved in the development of CVD and the discovery of new biomarkers of the disease could help to early identification of high-risk patients.Using liquid chromatography coupled to high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS) we analyzed the serum metabolomic profile of 30 subject distributed according three groups: (i) T2DM patients with CVD; (ii) T2DM patients without CVD; (iii) non-diabetic subjects as controls (C) in order to identify potential biomarkers of the CVD related to T2DM.A partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were applied to identify differential metabolites between different groups.Four glycerophospholipids were further identified as potential biomarkers of CVD in T2DM patients. Specifically, a reduction in phosphatidylcholine, lysophosphatidylcholine and lysophosphatidylethanolamine (LPE) serum levels were found in T2DM patients compared to controls, presenting the patients with CVD the lowest serum levels of these metabolites.These results show a generalized reduction of circulating phospholipids species in T2DM patients which is more pronounced in those with CVD providing information of the pathways involved in the pathogenesis and progression of CVD associated to T2DM.

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