The pathogenesis of
systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) remains elusive. It appears that serum lipid metabolism is aberrant in SLE patients. Determination of
lipid profiles in the serum of SLE patients may provide insights into the underlying mechanism(s) leading to SLE and may discover potential
biomarkers for early diagnosis of SLE. This study aimed to identify and quantify the profile of serum
lipids in SLE patients (
N = 30) with our powerful multi-dimensional mass spectrometry-based shotgun lipidomics platform. Multivariate analysis in the form of partial least squares-discriminate analysis was performed, and the associations between the changed
lipids with
cytokines and SLE disease activity index (SLEDAI) were analyzed using a multiple regression method. The results of this study indicated that the composition of
lipid species including diacyl
phosphatidylethanolamine (dPE) (16:0/18:2, 18:0/18:2, 16:0/22:6, 18:0/20:4, and 18:0/22:6), 18:2 lysoPC (LPC), and
ceramide (N22:0 and N24:1) was significantly altered in SLE patients with p < 0.05 and variable importance of the projection (VIP) > 1 in partial least squares-discriminate analysis (PLS-DA). There existed significant associations between
IL-10, and both 18:0/18:2 and 16:0/22:6 dPE species with p < 0.0001 and predicting 85.7 and 95.8% of the variability of
IL-10 levels, respectively. All the altered
lipid species could obviously predict
IL-10 levels with F (8, 21) = 3.729, p = 0.007, and R² = 0.766. There was also a significant correlation between the SLEDAI score and 18:0/18:2 dPE (p = 0.031) with explaining 22.6% of the variability of SLEDAI score. Therefore, the panel of changed compositions of dPE and
ceramide species may serve as additional
biomarkers for early diagnosis and/or prognosis of SLE.