Analysis of the saliva metabolic signature in patients with primary Sjögren’s syndrome

BACKGROUND: The saliva metabolome has been applied to explore disease biomarkers. In this study we characterized the metabolic profile of primary Sjögren’s syndrome (pSS) patients and explored metabolomic biomarkers. METHODS: This work presents a liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry-based metabolomic study of the saliva of 32 patients with pSS and 38 age- and sex-matched healthy adults. Potential pSS saliva metabolite biomarkers were explored using test group saliva samples (20 patients with pSS vs. 25 healthy adults) and were then verified by a cross-validation group (12 patients with pSS vs. 13 healthy adults). RESULTS: Metabolic pathways, including tryptophan metabolism, tyrosine metabolism, carbon fixation, and aspartate and asparagine metabolism, were found to be significantly regulated and related to inflammatory injury, neurological cognitive impairment and the immune response. Phenylalanyl-alanine was discovered to have good predictive ability for pSS, with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.87 in the testing group (validation group: AUC = 0.75). CONCLUSION: Our study shows that salivary metabolomics is a useful strategy for differential analysis and biomarker discovery in pSS.