Metabolism of serum neurotransmitter precursors after COVID-19
Effects of demographic, clinical, psychometric, inflammatory and infection-related variables on blood markers of systemic serotonin availability (serotonin, tryptophan), kynureine pathway products competing with serotonin biosynthesis (kynurenine, quinolinate) and on markers of systemic dopamine turnover (dopamine 3-O-sulfate, phenylalanine and tyrosine) were assessed in two cohorts of SARS-CoV-2 indidivuals and uninfected controls: the cross-sectional single-timepoint SIMMUN cohort and the published longitudinal INCOV collective 1.
Our results indicate that SARS-CoV-2-dependent inflammation can lower systemic availability of serotonin and dopamine by depletion of the tryptophan via the competitive kynurenine pathway and inhibition of the phenylalanine - tyrosine suppression, respectively. Those effects can be further amplified by advanced age, mental stress and depression. It remains to be investigated, if and how this mechanism may contribute to neurotransmitter metabolism in the central nervous system and, consequently, to psychiatric disorders following SARS-CoV-2 infection.
You may follow the analysis and manuscript progress here.
The results are also available as a peer-reviewed publication, in Psychoneuroendocrinology.
Please cite the repository and the peer-reviewed publication. The raw data files will be made upon request to the senior study author, Prof. Katharina Hüfner.
The following development packages are required to run the pipeline:
devtools::install_github('PiotrTymoszuk/soucer') ## script sourcing
devtools::install_github('PiotrTymoszuk/ExDA') ## exploratory data analysis and staristical hypothesis testing
devtools::install_github('PiotrTymoszuk/clustTools') ## factor analysis
devtools::install_github('PiotrTymoszuk/caretExtra') ## fit statistics and quality control for the Caret models
devtools::install_github('PiotrTymoszuk/lmqc') ## fit statistics and quality control for linear models
devtools::install_github('PiotrTymoszuk/figur') ## management of figures and tables in Rmd documents
devtools::install_github('PiotrTymoszuk/trafo') ## handling of tabular data
Source 'exec.R' to launch the entire pipeline:
source('exec.R')
The repository maintainer is Piotr Tymoszuk. Data requests should be addressed to Prof. Katharina Hüfner.
Footnotes
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Su, Y. et al. Multiple early factors anticipate post-acute COVID-19 sequelae. Cell 185, 881-895.e20 (2022). ↩