Healthy plasma lipidomic signatures depend on sex, age, body mass index, and contraceptives but not perceived stress

The present study investigated how signaling lipids and lipidomic signatures are influenced by sex, age, body mass index, food supplements, occasional and regular drugs and everyday perceived stress. The study included 217 healthy women and 108 healthy men aged 18-68 years, who were recruited in a 2:1 female-to-male ratio to account for women with/without contraceptives.
The Perceived Stress Questionnaire (PSQ30) in a German-modified validated version (PEQ-30 W4) was used to assess the perceived psychosocial and occupational stress.
Bioactive lipids including sphingolipids and ceramides, lysophosphatidic acids, endocannabinoids, eicosanoids (oxylipins) and pterins were analyzed in plasma by liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-ESI-MS/MS).
For untargeted lipidomic analyses plasma samples were extracted using methyl-tert-butyl-ether, the organic phase was split into two aliquots, one for analysis in negative ion mode and the other in positive ion mode. LC-MS analysis was performed on a Nexera X2 system coupled to a TripleTOF 6600 (Sciex).
Detailed analytical protocols in S-BSST-389
A previous version of the manuscript has been posted on Research Square with the URL https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-4408378/v1