Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal (Jan 2015)

Possible Biomarkers for the Early Detection of HIV-associated Heart Diseases: A Proteomics and Bioinformatics Prediction

  • Suraiya Rasheed,
  • Rahim Hashim,
  • Jasper S. Yan

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.csbj.2015.02.001
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 13, no. C
pp. 145 – 152

Abstract

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The frequency of cardiovascular disorders is increasing in HIV-infected individuals despite a significant reduction in the viral load by antiretroviral therapies (ART). Since the CD4+ T-cells are responsible for the viral load as well as immunological responses, we hypothesized that chronic HIV-infection of T-cells produces novel proteins/enzymes that cause cardiac dysfunctions. To identify specific factors that might cause cardiac disorders without the influence of numerous cofactors produced by other pathogenic microorganisms that co-inhabit most HIV-infected individuals, we analyzed genome-wide proteomes of a CD4+ T-cell line at different stages of HIV replication and cell growth over >6 months. Subtractive analyses of several hundred differentially regulated proteins from HIV-infected and uninfected counterpart cells and comparisons with proteins expressed from the same cells after treating with the antiviral drug Zidovudine/AZT and inhibiting virus replication, identified a well-coordinated network of 12 soluble/diffusible proteins in HIV-infected cells. Functional categorization, bioinformatics and statistical analyses of each protein predicted that the expression of cardiac-specific Ca2+ kinase together with multiple Ca2+ release channels causes a sustained overload of Ca2+ in the heart which induces fetal/cardiac myosin heavy chains (MYH6 and MYH7) and a myosin light-chain kinase. Each of these proteins has been shown to cause cardiac stress, arrhythmia, hypertrophic signaling, cardiomyopathy and heart failure (p = 8 × 10−11). Translational studies using the newly discovered proteins produced by HIV infection alone would provide additional biomarkers that could be added to the conventional markers for an early diagnosis and/or development of specific therapeutic interventions for heart diseases in HIV-infected individuals.

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