부산대학교 도서관

Simple Summary: The vaginal microbiome may play a role in racial disparities in ovarian cancer; there is evidence suggesting that it differs according to race and contributes to inflammation by producing or consuming compounds that can shape how ovarian cancer progresses. Our cross-sectional study aimed to investigate the extent to which chemical compounds, or metabolites, from vaginal fluid, also differ by race, and whether these metabolites are linked to systemic inflammation. Our study of 20 White and 16 Black patients identified 1 out of 99 metabolites, arachidonoylcarnitine (C20:4), as occurring at lower levels in Black and higher levels in White patients with ovarian cancer. More than one-third of vaginal fluid metabolites considered showed correlations with biomarkers of systemic inflammation. Our findings suggest that vaginal fluid metabolites likely differ by race, and may play an important role in inflammatory processes, which may be relevant to racial differences in ovarian cancer outcomes. These pilot findings have the potential to improve our understanding of biological mechanisms underlying racial disparities in ovarian cancer but need verification with larger sample sizes. The vaginal microbiome differs by race and contributes to inflammation by directly producing or consuming metabolites or by indirectly inducing host immune response, but its potential contributions to ovarian cancer (OC) disparities remain unclear. In this exploratory cross-sectional study, we examine whether vaginal fluid metabolites differ by race among patients with OC, if they are associated with systemic inflammation, and if such associations differ by race. Study participants were recruited from the Ovarian Cancer Epidemiology, Healthcare Access, and Disparities Study between March 2021 and September 2022. Our study included 36 study participants with ovarian cancer who provided biospecimens; 20 randomly selected White patients and all 16 eligible Black patients, aged 50–70 years. Acylcarnitines (n = 45 species), sphingomyelins (n = 34), and ceramides (n = 21) were assayed on cervicovaginal fluid, while four cytokines (IL-1β, IL-10, TNF-α, and IL-6) were assayed on saliva. Seven metabolites showed >2-fold differences, two showed significant differences using the Wilcoxon rank-sum test (p < 0.05; False Discovery Rate > 0.05), and 30 metabolites had coefficients > ±0.1 in a Penalized Discriminant Analysis that achieved two distinct clusters by race. Arachidonoylcarnitine, the carnitine adduct of arachidonic acid, appeared to be consistently different by race. Thirty-eight vaginal fluid metabolites were significantly correlated with systemic inflammation biomarkers, irrespective of race. These findings suggest that vaginal fluid metabolites may differ by race, are linked with systemic inflammation, and hint at a potential role for mitochondrial dysfunction and sphingolipid metabolism in OC disparities. Larger studies are needed to verify these findings and further establish specific biological mechanisms that may link the vaginal microbiome with OC racial disparities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]