PANS:  Inflammation Significant in Metabolomic Characterization of Children

The results of the present study suggest unique plasma metabolite profiles in PANS patients, significantly differing from healthy children, showing abnormal levels of metabolites associated with neurotransmission (tryptophan, glycine, histamine/histidine) and generalized energy deficiency, oxidative stress, neuroinflammation (glutamine, 2-Hydroxybutyrate and, potentially, the tryptophan-kynurenine pathway). Overall, the evidence provided by the present study is consistent with the accumulating data supporting the presence of a neuroinflammatory component in several psychiatric illnesses (Tong et al., 2016). Inflammatory biomarkers have been found in common neuropsychiatric outcomes (Najjar et al., 2013), such as ADHD (Yuan et al., 2019), ASD (Dunn et al., 2019), bipolar disorder (Xu et al., 2015), depression (Muneer, 2016), and schizophrenia (Dowlati et al., 2010; Na et al., 2014).

Metabolomic Characterization of Pediatric Acute-Onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome (PANS)