Differential Proteins Expression Distinguished Between Patients With Infectious and Noninfectious Uveitis

ABSTRACT

Purpose

We investigated the aqueous humor proteome and associated plasma proteome in patients with infectious or noninfectious uveitis.

Methods

AH and plasma were obtained from 28 patients with infectious uveitis (IU), 29 patients with noninfectious uveitis (NIU) and 35 healthy controls undergoing cataract surgery. The proteins profile was analyzed by SomaScan technology.

Results

We found 1844 and 2484 proteins up-regulated and 124 and 161 proteins down-regulated in the AH from IU and NIU groups, respectively. In the plasma, three proteins were up-regulated in NIU patients, and one and five proteins were down-regulated in the IU and NIU patients, respectively. The results of pathway enrichment analysis for both IU and NIU groups were related mostly to inflammatory and regulatory processes.

Conclusion

SomaScan was able to detect novel AH and plasma protein biomarkers in IU and NIU patients. Also, the unique proteins found in both AH and plasma suggest a protein signature that could distinguish between infectious and noninfectious uveitis.

KEYWORDS:

• Biomarkers
• infectious uveitis
• noninfectious uveitis
• proteomic platform
• SOMAscan

Acknowledgments

Authors would like to thank Amy Chen and Lori Jennings from Novartis for facilitating the Somascan study.

Disclosure statement

N.L., C.L.H., J.L., A.B., and Q.Z. are current employees of Ophthalmology, Novartis Institutes for Biomedical. Q. G.M. And Q.H. were employees of Ophthalmology, Novartis Institutes for Biomedical. All other authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09273948.2022.2150224.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.