Cluster analysis of immunological serum markers in patients with Parkinson’s disease

Abstract

Introduction. The study of patients biological features, including their immune responses, in specific diseases, is an important step towards personalized diagnosis and treatment. Parkinsons disease (PD) is thus of particular interest as one of the most common age-related neurodegenerative diseases. Study aim to determine the immunophenotypes of patients with PD using cluster analysis. Materials and methods. Mathematical analysis was conducted on a database of 46 patients with PD. The levels of the following functionally related inflammatory markers were used as the classification characteristics: the enzymatic activity of leukocyte elastase (LE), the functional activity of 1-proteinase inhibitor (1-PI), the auto-antibody levels to S-100b and myelin basic protein. Results. Based on the immunological markers, the use of multiple algorithms in the cluster analysis of the PD database allowed to obtain two consistent clusters. The patients in cluster 1 were characterized by a high level of LE activity and a low level of functional 1-PI activity, which indicates insufficient serum antiproteolytic capacity and is an unfavourable prognostic indicator for further development of the inflammation-associated pathological process in the brain tissue. The patients in cluster 2 were characterized by increased functional 1-PI activity in the serum, increased S-100b antibody levels and a decreased LE activity as compared with cluster 1, which indicates dysregulation of the inflammatory response, associated with insufficient neutrophil degranulation, whereas elevated autoantibody levels to the neural antigen S100b characterize the most severe lesions in the nervous system. Conclusion. The results of the cluster analysis enable the identification of two immunophenotypes in patients with PD, indicating that a phenotypically similar presentation can be due to a different spectrum of immune markers. The obtained data will serve as a basis for development of an immunological approach to personalized diagnosis and treatment.

Keywords

• parkinson’s disease
• cluster analysis
• leukocyte elastase
• α1-proteinase inhibitor
• autoantibodies to s-100b and myelin basic protein