Alterations of plasma inflammatory biomarkers in the healthy and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients with or without acute exacerbation.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is one of the leading causes of mortally and morbidity, associated with acute exacerbations (AECOPD) resulted from smoking, infection or air pollution. Systemic inflammation has been considered as one of major pathophysiologic alterations in AECOPD. The present study aimed at developing disease-specific biomarker evaluation by integrating proteomic profiles of inflammatory mediators in AECOPD with clinical and biological informatics. Plasma samples from 18 subjects including healthy people or patients with stable COPD or AECOPD were collected to measure 507 inflammatory mediators using antibody microarray. Clinical informatics was achieved by a Digital Evaluation Score System (DESS) for assessing severity of patients. 20 mediators were significantly different between 3 groups (p<0.05), of which, Cerberus 1, Growth Hormone R, IL-1F6, IL-17B R, IL-17D, IL-19, Lymphotoxin beta, MMP-10, Thrombopoietin and TLR4 were correlated with DESS scores (p<0.05). There was a down-regulation of systemic inflammatory responses in AECOPD. The integration of proteomic profile with clinical informatics as part of clinical bioinformatics is important to screen disease-specific and disease-staged biomarkers. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Proteomics: The clinical link.