Lipidomic analysis of immune activation in equine leptospirosis and Leptospira-vaccinated horses

Paul L. Wood, Margaret Steinman, Erdal Erol, Craig Carter, Undine Christmann, Ashutosh Verma

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

16 Scopus citations

Abstract

Currently available diagnostic assays for leptospirosis cannot differentiate vaccine from infection serum antibody. Several leptospiral proteins that are upregulated during infection have been described, but their utility as a diagnostic marker is still unclear. In this study, we undertook a lipidomics approach to determine if there are any differences in the serum lipid profiles of horses naturally infected with pathogenic Leptospira spp. and horses vaccinated against a commercially available bacterin. Utilizing a high-resolution mass spectrometry serum lipidomics analytical platform, we demonstrate that cyclic phosphatidic acids, diacylglycerols, and hydroperoxide oxidation products of choline plasmalogens are elevated in the serum of naturally infected as well as vaccinated horses. Other lipids of interest were triacylglycerols that were only elevated in the serum of infected horses and sphingomyelins that were increased only in the serum of vaccinated horses. This is the first report looking at the equine serum lipidome during leptospiral infection and vaccination.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere0193424
JournalPLoS ONE
Volume13
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 2018

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Wood 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.

Funding

Funds for this work were provided by LMU-College of Veterinary Medicine’s internal grant program. The funders had no role in the study design or this manuscript. Funds for this work were provided by LMU-College of Veterinary Medicine’s internal grant program. We thank Brittney Beigel, Dan Kish, Joey Morgan, Charles Faulkner, John Dascanio for technical assistance or helpful comments on the manuscript.

FundersFunder number
University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • General

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