Alterations in plasma lipid profile before and after surgical removal of soft tissue sarcoma

Abstract

Background Soft tissue sarcoma (STS) is a relatively rare malignancy, accounting for about 1% of all adult cancers. It is known to have more than 70 subtypes. Its rarity, coupled with its various subtypes, makes early diagnosis challenging. The current standard treatment for STS is surgical removal. To aid in identifying prognosis and pathogenesis, we utilized an untargeted metabolomic approach to profile the altered endogenous metabolites in pre-operative and post-operative plasma samples of STS patients. Methods We collected pre-operative and post-operative plasma samples from 24 patients with STS who underwent surgical removal of masses. Plasma metabolic profiling was conducted using ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole time-of-flight/mass spectrometry. Out of the 24 patients, 11 experienced recurrences after the operations. Multivariate analysis and permutation tests were conducted to identify putative altered metabolites. Univariate receiver operator characteristic analysis was performed to evaluate their predictive performance. Results Thirty-nine putative metabolites were identified based on the orthogonal projections to latent structures-discriminant analysis, with 34 of them showing statistical significance. These metabolites included phospholipids and acyl-carnitines, indicating changes in lipid metabolism. Specifically, phospholipids exhibited an increase in the post-operative samples, while acyl-carnitines showed a decrease. Notably, lysophosphatidylcholine (LPC) O-18:0 and LPC-O16:2 demonstrated predictive capabilities for STS recurrence, with area under the curve values of 0.748 and 0.797, respectively. Conclusions Our investigation revealed distinct alterations in the lipid profiles of plasma in STS patients after surgical resection of masses. We anticipate that these findings can contribute to the elucidation of the pathophysiology of STS and the development of further metabolic studies in this rare malignancy.