TY  - JOUR
A1  - Grammatikos, Georgios
A1  - Ferreirós Bouzas, Nerea
A1  - Waidmann, Oliver
A1  - Bon, Dimitra
A1  - Schroeter, Sirkka
A1  - Koch, Alexander
A1  - Herrmann, Eva
A1  - Zeuzem, Stefan
A1  - Kronenberger, Bernd
A1  - Pfeilschifter, Josef
T1  - Serum sphingolipid variations associate with hepatic decompensation and survival in patients with cirrhosis
T2  - PLoS One
N2  - Background: Sphingolipids constitute bioactive molecules with functional implications in liver homeostasis. Particularly, ablation of very long chain ceramides in a knockout mouse model has been shown to cause a severe hepatopathy.
Methods: We aimed to evaluate the serum sphingolipid profile of 244 patients with cirrhosis prospectively followed for a median period of 228±217 days via mass spectrometry.
Results: We thereby observed a significant decrease of long and very long chain ceramides, particularly of C24ceramide, in patients with increasing severity of cirrhosis (p<0.001). Additionally, hydropic decompensation, defined by clinical presentation of ascites formation, was significantly correlated to low C24ceramide levels (p<0.001) while a significant association to hepatic decompensation and poor overall survival was observed for low serum concentrations of C24ceramide (p<0.001) as well. Multivariate analysis further identified low serum C24ceramide to be independently associated to overall survival (standard beta = -0.001, p = 0.022).
Conclusions: In our current analysis serum levels of very long chain ceramides show a significant reciprocal correlation to disease severity and hepatic decompensation and are independently associated with overall survival in patients with cirrhosis. Serum sphingolipid metabolites and particularly C24ceramide may constitute novel molecular targets of disease severity, hepatic decompensation and overall prognosis in cirrhosis and should be further evaluated in basic research studies.
Y1  - 2015
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/39033
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-390332
SN  - 1932-6203
N1  - Copyright: © 2015 Grammatikos et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
VL  - 10
IS  - (9): e0138130
SP  - 1
EP  - 15
PB  - PLoS
CY  - Lawrence, Kan.
ER  -