Characterization of serum N-glycome alterations in seasonal allergic rhinitis using MALDI-TOF-MS: A pilot study

Abstract

Seasonal allergic rhinitis (SAR) is an inflammatory process. In this pilot study, matrix assisted laser desorption ionization-mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS)-based analyses were conducted to investigate the effects of SAR on serum N-glycome in a small dataset (n = 10 for both SAR patients and controls). It was detected that two N-glycan compositions (H6N5E2L1 and H6N5E1L2) were down-regulated in SAR patients. Additionally, five tri-antennary N-glycan traits, including both galactosylated and sialylated (A3GS and A3GL) and non-fucosylated (A3F0GE, A3F0GL, A3F0GS) ones, were decreased. Furthermore, three high-antennary and fucosylated N-glycan traits (A3F, A3EF and A4F) were increased in SAR patients compared to controls.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Glycomics
• MALDI-TOF-MS
• mass spectrometry
• seasonal Allergic rhinitis (SAR)
• serum N-glycosylation

Acknowledgements

Sample preparation and mass spectrometric analysis of the study were performed in the Salih Research Group Laboratories (https://sareglab.org/) at Hacettepe University, Department of Chemistry, Ankara, Turkey.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was partly supported by Ministry of Development-Republic of Turkey with the project Number: 2016 K121230. Bekir Salih gratefully acknowledges the Turkish Academy of Science (TUBA) for the partial financial support.