Publication date: May 08, 2025
High-resolution metabolomics has shown promise for identifying blood-based biomarkers of tuberculosis (TB). We sought to discover a metabolic signature to detect pulmonary TB disease and monitor treatment response. Plasma from Ethiopian persons with pulmonary TB at diagnosis (n=82) was compared to household contacts with TB symptoms (n=104) and 2, 6, and 12 months after treatment initiation. Participants were divided into training and test sets for model building, with additional validation using independent cohorts from the countries of Georgia (n=89) and South Africa (n=85). Signatures were further evaluated in non-human primates infected with M. tuberculosis (Mtb). Among the metabolites that most significantly differed in concentration, tryptophan and retinol were significantly decreased in persons with TB disease (45. 2 uM vs 62. 5 uM and 4. 1 uM vs 8. 2 uM respectively), while kynurenine was significantly increased (2. 1 uM vs 1. 6 uM; q
| Concepts | Keywords |
|---|---|
| Biomarkers | Biomarkers |
| Georgia | Diagnostics |
| Increased | Metabolomics |
| Primates | Tuberculosis |
| Tuberculosis |
Semantics
| Type | Source | Name |
|---|---|---|
| disease | MESH | pulmonary tuberculosis |
| disease | IDO | blood |
| disease | MESH | tuberculosis |
| pathway | KEGG | Tuberculosis |
| disease | MESH | tryptophan |
| drug | DRUGBANK | L-Tryptophan |
| drug | DRUGBANK | Vitamin A |