Screening for potential serum-based proteomic biomarkers for human type 2 diabetes mellitus using MALDI-TOF MS.

BACKGROUND

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a complex, pandemic disease contributing towards the global burden of health issues. To date, there are no simple clinical tests for the early detection of T2DM.

METHOD

To identify potential peptide biomarkers for such applications, 406 sera of T2DM patients (n = 206) and healthy controls (n = 200) are analyzed by using MALDI-TOF MS with a cross-sectional case-control design.

RESULT

Six peptides (peaks m/z 1452.9, 1692.8, 1946.0, 2115.1, 2211.0 and 4053.6) are identified as candidate biomarkers for T2DM. A diagnostic model constructed with six peptides is able to discriminate T2DM patients from healthy controls, with an accuracy of 82.20%, sensitivity of 82.50%, and specificity of 77.80% in the validation set. Peptide peaks m/z 1452.9 and 1692.8 are identified as fragments of the complement C3f, while peptide peaks m/z 1946.0, 2115.1, and 2211.0 are identified as the fragments of kininogen 1 isoform 1 precursor.

CONCLUSION

This study reinforces proteomic analyses as a potential technique for defining significant clinical peptide biomarkers, providing a simple and convenient diagnostic model for T2DM in clinical examination.