Differentially expressed serum proteins in children with or without asthma as determined using isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation proteomics

BACKGROUND: Although asthma is one of the most common chronic, noncommunicable diseases worldwide, the pathogenesis of childhood asthma is not yet clear. Genetic factors and environmental factors may lead to airway immune-inflammation responses and an imbalance of airway nerve regulation. The aim of the present study was to determine which serum proteins are differentially expressed between children with or without asthma and to ascertain the potential roles that these differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) may play in the pathogenesis of childhood asthma. METHODS: Serum samples derived from four children with asthma and four children without asthma were collected. The DEPs were identified by using isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation (iTRAQ) combined with liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) analyses. Using biological information technology, including Gene Ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG), and Cluster of Orthologous Groups of Proteins (COG) databases and analyses, we determined the biological processes associated with these DEPs. Key protein glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) was verified by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). RESULTS: We found 46 DEPs in serum samples of children with asthma vs. children without asthma. Among these DEPs, 12 proteins were significantly (>1.5 fold change) upregulated and 34 proteins were downregulated. The results of GO analyses showed that the DEPs were mainly involved in binding, the immune system, or responding to stimuli or were part of a cellular anatomical entity. In the KEGG signaling pathway analysis, most of the downregulated DEPs were associated with cardiomyopathy, phagosomes, viral infections, and regulation of the actin cytoskeleton. The results of a COG analysis showed that the DEPs were primarily involved in signal transduction mechanisms and posttranslational modifications. These DEPs were associated with and may play important roles in the immune response, the inflammatory response, extracellular matrix degradation, and the nervous system. The downregulated of G6PD in the asthma group was confirmed using ELISA experiment. CONCLUSION: After bioinformatics analyses, we found numerous DEPs that may play important roles in the pathogenesis of childhood asthma. Those proteins may be novel biomarkers of childhood asthma and may provide new clues for the early clinical diagnosis and treatment of childhood asthma.