Caution in studying and interpreting the lupus metabolome

Table 1 Eleven studies investigating the serum or plasma metabolome in SLE patients

Study	Country	Differential Metabolites*	Biofluid	Platform	Patients	Controls	Corrections	Confounding factors mentioned
Ouyang 2011 [5]	China	27	Serum	¹H-NMR	64 SLE	30 RA, 35 HC	Age, sex, race	M, S
Wu 2012 [16]	USA	319	Serum	LC/MS, GC/MS	20 SLE	9 HC	Age, sex, race, BMI	M, Co-M
Bengtsson 2016 [7]	Sweden	20	Serum	GC/MS	30 SLE	18 HC, 19 SSc, 20 pSS	Age, sex, race	M
Guleria 2016 [8]	India	19	Serum	¹H-NMR	22 SLE, 40 LN	30 HC	Age, sex, race	M
Yan 2016 [9]	China	41	Serum	GC/MS	80 SLE	57 HC	Age, sex, race, BMI	M
Li 2017 [12]	China	23	Serum	LC/MS	32 LN	30 INS, 28 HC	Age, sex, race, BMI	None
Shin 2017 [10]	Korea	13	Plasma	GC/MS	41 SLE	41 HC	Age, sex, race	M
Guleria 2018 [11]	India	17	Serum	¹H-NMR	18 LN	18 LNT, 30 HC	Age, sex, race	M
Li 2019 [14]	China	50	Serum	LC/MS	17 SLE	17 HC	Age, sex, race	None
Bellocchi 2019 [13]	Italy	4	Plasma	LC/MS	27 SLE	23 pSS, 11 PAPS, 26 UCTD, 27 HC	Age, sex, race	M
Zhang 2020 [15]	China	55	Serum	LC/MS	32 SLE	25 HC	Age, sex, race, BMI	M

Co-M co-morbidities, GC/MS gas chromatography mass spectrometry, HC healthy control, INS idiopathic nephrotic syndrome, LC/MS liquid chromatography mass spectrometry, LN lupus nephritis, LNT lupus nephritis after treatment, M medications, NMR¹H nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, PAPS primary anti-phospholipid syndrome, pSS primary Sjögren’s syndrome, RA rheumatoid arthritis, S smoking, SLE systemic lupus erythematosus, SSc systemic sclerosis, UCTD undifferentiated connective tissue disease
*Differentially expressed metabolites between SLE (or LN if all patients were LN) and HC

ISSN: 1478-6362