PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Suan-Sin Foo
AU  - Weiqiang Chen
AU  - Kyle L. Jung
AU  - Tamiris Azamor
AU  - Un Yung Choi
AU  - Pengfei Zhang
AU  - Suzy AA Comhair
AU  - Serpil C. Erzurum
AU  - Lara Jehi
AU  - Jae U. Jung
TI  - Immunometabolic rewiring in long COVID patients with chronic headache
AID  - 10.1101/2023.03.06.531302
DP  - 2023 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2023.03.06.531302
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2023/03/06/2023.03.06.531302.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2023/03/06/2023.03.06.531302.full
AB  - Almost 20% of patients with COVID-19 experience long-term effects, known as post-COVID condition or long COVID. Among many lingering neurologic symptoms, chronic headache is the most common. Despite this health concern, the etiology of long COVID headache is still not well characterized. Here, we present a longitudinal multi-omics analysis of blood leukocyte transcriptomics, plasma proteomics and metabolomics of long COVID patients with chronic headache. Long COVID patients experienced a state of hyper-inflammation prior to chronic headache onset and maintained persistent inflammatory activation throughout the progression of chronic headache. Metabolomic analysis also revealed augmented arginine and lipid metabolisms, skewing towards a nitric oxide-based pro-inflammation. Furthermore, metabolisms of neurotransmitters including serotonin, dopamine, glutamate, and GABA were markedly dysregulated during the progression of long COVID headache. Overall, these findings illustrate the immuno-metabolomics landscape of long COVID patients with chronic headache, which may provide insights to potential therapeutic interventions.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.