Análisis metabolómico del suero de niños infectados por arbovirosis: desarrollo de diagnóstico diferencial por LC-MS

Abstract

CONDITION FOR PUBLICATION OF PROJECT. For children in Guayaquil, the diagnosis of dengue, Zika, and chikungunya poses a major challenge due to overlapping symptoms and the high cost of current tests. As an alternative, serum metabolomic profiling using LC-MS was applied to search for patterns capable of distinguishing between infections. Serum samples from 66 children from Guayaquil with RTPCR– confirmed infection (25 DENV, 8 ZIKV, 17 CHIKV) and febrile controls (n=16) were analyzed through multivariate statistical methods. A panel of 15 relevant metabolites was selected, nine of which were identified as lipids (sphingolipids, glycerolipids, sterols, and fatty acids). Validation showed strong discriminatory power for dengue (AUC=0.867) and moderate performance in differentiating infected patients from controls (AUC=0.781), while separation for Zika (AUC=0.158) and chikungunya (AUC=0.542) was insufficient. These findings suggest that metabolomics may provide an initial framework for developing rapid and lower-cost diagnostic tools, with particular relevance in public health contexts where access to molecular techniques remains limited. Keywords: clinical metabolomics, LC-MS, pediatric biomarkers, accessible diagnostics