Screening inflammatory protein biomarkers on premature infants with necrotizing enterocolitis

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to explore potential inflammatory biomarkers for early prediction of necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) in premature infants. METHODS: Plasma samples were collected from premature infants with NEC (n = 30), sepsis (n = 29), and controls without infection (n = 29). The 92 inflammatory-related proteins were assessed via high-throughput OLINK proteomics platform. RESULTS: There were 11 inflammatory proteins that significate differences (p < 0.05) among NEC, sepsis and control preterm infants, which include IL-8, TRAIL, IL-24, MMP-10, CCL20, CXCL1, OPG, TSLP, MCP-4, TNFSF14 and LIF. A combination of these 11 proteins could serve as differential diagnosis between NEC and control infants (AUC = 0.972), or between NEC and sepsis infants (AUC = 0.881). Furthermore, the combination of IL-8, OPG, MCP-4, IL-24, LIF and CCL20 could distinguish Stage II and III of NEC (AUC = 0.977). Further analysis showed the combination of IL-8, IL-24 and CCL20 have the best prediction value for NEC and control (AUC = 0.947), NEC and sepsis (AUC = 0.838) and different severity of NEC (AUC = 0.842). CONCLUSION: Inflammatory proteins were different expressed in premature infants with NEC compared with controls or sepsis. Combining these proteins provide a higher diagnostic potential for preterm NEC infants. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00011-023-01702-6.