Researchers at the European Foundation for the Study of Chronic Liver Failure (EF CLIF) studying cirrhotic patients admitted to the Liver Intensive Care Unit at Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, Spain, have now described alterations on the plasma profile of lipid mediators derived from polyunsaturated fatty acids in patients with acute decompensation of cirrhosis compared to healthy subjects.

This new study published on 18 February 2022 in Hepatology Communications reveals that the overall plasma concentration of lipid mediators is reduced in patients with advanced liver disease and suggests that albumin modulates the release of lipid mediators by peripheral leukocytes promoting resolution of inflammation, a process that may be impaired in acute decompensation of cirrhosis. “We found that circulating albumin has a distinct lipid composition characterized by a profound depletion in the content of anti-inflammatory lipid mediators in patients with advanced cirrhosis compared to that of healthy subjects”, said Mireia Casulleras, leading author on the paper and pre-doctoral researcher at the Inflammation and Hepatic Diseases group at Hospital Clínic de Barcelona-August Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBAPS), Spain.

The study also examined the levels of lipid mediators in plasma in patients with acute decompensation of cirrhosis from a previous albumin clinical trial. Sort-term albumin treatment in these patients resulted in a reduction of prostaglandin E2, a lipid mediator that drives immunosuppression, and an increase of 15-hydroxyeicosatetraenoic acid (15-HETE), an intermediate marker of the biosynthesis of pro-resolving lipid mediators. “These findings might contribute to understand the anti-inflammatory effects observed during albumin infusions in patients with acute decompensation of cirrhosis”, said Joan Clària, corresponding author of the paper, Director of the Grifols Chair and head of translational operations at EF CLIF and principal investigator at Hospital Clínic de Barcelona-IDIBAPS, Spain. Despite the preliminary nature of these results, these findings suggest a role for albumin as a modulator of the biosynthesis of bioactive lipid mediators and release by circulating immune cells.

This study was supported by the Agency for Management of University and Research Grants of the Government of Catalonia grant 2017SGR1449 and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation grant PID2019-105240RB-I00.

Other authors on the study are Roger Flores-Costa, Marta Duran-Güell, Ingrid W. Zhang, Cristina López-Vicario, Anna Curto, Javier Fernández, and Vicente Arroyo.

Publication information

Casulleras, M.; Flores-Costa, R.; Duran-Güell, M.; Zhang, I. W.; López-Vicario, C.; Curto, A.; Fernández, J.; Arroyo, V.; Clària, J. Albumin lipidomics reveals meaningful compositional changes in advanced cirrhosis and its potential to promote inflammation resolution. Hepatol. Commun. 2022. DOI: 10.1002/hep4.1893