Fig. 5. Lymphopenia and prolonged viral shedding are associated with perturbations of the polyamine and biliary acid pathways.
A Volcano plot identifying statistically different serum metabolites between patients experiencing short-term viral RNA shedding (SVS) and those experiencing long-term viral RNA shedding (LVS) in Cancer_FR1_TR cohort. Metabolites significantly different between both groups are in red and annotated (P < 0.05, FC > 0.5). B Levels of murideoxycholic acid according to the duration of viral shedding in Cancer_FR1_TR (left panel) and Spearman correlation with absolute lymphocyte count (ALC) (right panel). The color code corresponds to the category of cycle threshold (Ct) and ALC at diagnosis. C, D Serum concentrations of deoxycholic acid according to the duration of viral shedding in Cancer_FR1_TR (C) and the severity of COVID-19 infection in cancer-free individuals (D). E Waterfall plot of Spearman’s correlation coefficient (rs) between ALC and 221 metabolites in the serum of patients diagnosed positive for COVID-19. F N1, N8 diacetylspermidine relative abundance in controls, SVS and LVS patients in the Cancer_FR1 cohort, that is negatively correlated with the ALC. The color code corresponds to the category of cycle threshold (Ct) and ALC at diagnosis. G Levels of N1, N8 diacetylspermidine in noncancer COVID-19 patients according to the clinical severity compared to COVID-19-negative controls (Ctls) (P < 0.0001) (G, left panel), that are negatively correlated with the absolute lymphocyte count (ALC) (G, right panel). Box plots display a group of numerical data through their 3rd and 1st quartiles (box), mean (central band), minimum and maximum (whiskers). Each dot represents one sample, each patient being drawn once for cancer-free individuals and one to two times for cancer patients. Statistical analyses used one-way ANOVA with Kenward–Roger method to take into account the number of specimen/patient (B, left panel, C–E, left panel): *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01), non-parametric unpaired Wilcoxon test (Mann–Whitney) for each two-group comparison: *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001, ****P < 0.0001.