Skin imprints to provide noninvasive metabolic profiling of COVID-19 patients

  1. Jeany Delafiori
  2. Rinaldo Focaccia Siciliano
  3. Arthur Noin de Oliveira
  4. José Carlos Nicolau
  5. Geovana Manzan Sales
  6. Talia Falcão Dalçóquio
  7. Estela Natacha Brandt Busanello
  8. Adriana Eguti
  9. Diogo Noin de Oliveira
  10. Adriadne Justi Bertolin
  11. Luiz Augusto dos Santos
  12. Rocío Salsoso
  13. Fabiana G Marcondes-Braga
  14. Nelson Durán
  15. Maurício Wesley Perroud
  16. Ester Cerdeira Sabino
  17. Leonardo Oliveira Reis
  18. Wagner José Fávaro
  19. Rodrigo Ramos Catharino

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Abstract

As the current COVID-19 pandemic progresses, more symptoms and signals related to how the disease manifests in the human body arise in the literature. Skin lesions and coagulopathies may be confounding factors on routine care and patient management. We analyzed the metabolic and lipidic profile of the skin from COVID-19 patients using imprints in silica plates as a non-invasive alternative, in order to better understand the biochemical disturbances caused by SARS-CoV-2 in the skin. One hundred and one patients (64 COVID-19 positive patients and 37 control patients) were enrolled in this cross-sectional study from April 2020 to June 2020 during the first wave of COVID-19 in São Paulo, Brazil. Fourteen biomarkers were identified related to COVID-19 infection (7 increased and 7 decreased in COVID-19 patients). Remarkably, oleamide has shown promising performance, providing 79.0% of sensitivity on a receiver operating characteristic curve model. Species related to coagulation and immune system maintenance such as phosphatidylserines were decreased in COVID-19 patients; on the other hand, cytokine storm and immunomodulation may be affected by molecules increased in the COVID-19 group, particularly primary fatty acid amides and N-acylethanolamines, which are part of the endocannabinoid system. Our results show that skin imprints may be a useful, noninvasive strategy for COVID-19 screening, by electing a pool of biomarkers with diagnostic potential.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.04.17.21255518: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Ethicsnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.04.17.21255518 on medRxiv