Frontiers in Physiology (Dec 2017)

Discovery of a Potential Plasma Protein Biomarker Panel for Acute-on-Chronic Liver Failure Induced by Hepatitis B Virus

  • Ni Zhou,
  • Kuifeng Wang,
  • Shanhua Fang,
  • Shanhua Fang,
  • Xiaoyu Zhao,
  • Tingting Huang,
  • Huazhong Chen,
  • Fei Yan,
  • Yongzhi Tang,
  • Hu Zhou,
  • Hu Zhou,
  • Jiansheng Zhu

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2017.01009
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8

Abstract

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Hepatitis B virus (HBV)-associated acute-on-chronic liver failure (HBV-ACLF), characterized by an acute deterioration of liver function in the patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB), is lack of predicting biomarkers for prognosis. Plasma is an ideal sample for biomarker discovery due to inexpensive and minimally invasive sampling and good reproducibility. In this study, immuno-depletion of high-abundance plasma proteins followed by iTRAQ-based quantitative proteomic approach was employed to analyze plasma samples from 20 healthy control people, 20 CHB patients and 20 HBV-ACLF patients, respectively. As a result, a total of 427 proteins were identified from these samples, and 42 proteins were differentially expressed in HBV-ACLF patients as compared to both CHB patients and healthy controls. According to bioinformatics analysis results, 6 proteins related to immune response (MMR), inflammatory response (OPN, HPX), blood coagulation (ATIII) and lipid metabolism (APO-CII, GP73) were selected as biomarker candidates. Further ELISA analysis confirmed the significant up-regulation of GP73, MMR, OPN and down-regulation of ATIII, HPX, APO-CII in HBV-ACLF plasma samples (p < 0.01). Moreover, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis revealed high diagnostic value of these candidates in assessing HBV-ACLF. In conclusion, present quantitative proteomic study identified 6 novel HBV-ACLF biomarker candidates and might provide fundamental information for development of HBV-ACLF biomarker.

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