Potential biomarkers of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis: metabonomics driven lipid profiling

Through systematic metabolomics analysis, two novel serum lipid metabolites were identified as potential biomarkers for IPF for the first time. It has been confirmed that IPF patients exhibit significant reprogramming of lipid metabolism. It was the first time that 2-amino-1,3,4-octadecanetriol was reported to have a significant positive correlation with the abnormal coagulation function indicators (APTT, Fib, D-dimer) in patients with IPF. This provides a new metabolic perspective for understanding the pathophysiological mechanism of the increased risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) in IPF patients. Both of the two potential biomarkers were negatively correlated with hemoglobin. This connects the often overlooked IPF complication of nutritional metabolism imbalance (such as anemia) with the disease-specific metabolic changes, highlighting the importance of paying attention to the nutritional status in the management of IPF.