Department of Chemistry and the Beckman Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, United States.
Carle Foundation Hospital, Urbana, Illinois 61801, United States.
J Am Soc Mass Spectrom. 2024 Jan 3;35(1):106-113. doi: 10.1021/jasms.3c00331. Epub 2023 Nov 28.
Glycation is a spontaneous and nonenzymatic glycosylation. Glycated albumin (GA), which serves as an important biomarker in plasma in the diagnosis and characterization of diabetes, can be passively filtered from the plasma to tears. Tears are important targets for research in clinical diagnostics due to the ability to collect this biofluid noninvasively and repeatably. Therefore, the analysis of GA in tear film provides information for monitoring diabetes progression independent of blood pathologies. Due to the limited volume (1-5 μL) of natural tear film, we developed a small volume assay using a nano liquid chromatography-trapped ion mobility spectrometry-time-of-flight MS (nanoLC-timsTOF) platform for the analysis of glycated albumin in human plasma and tear films affected by diabetes. The peptides containing lysine 525, which is the main glycation site in GA, were relatively quantified and represented as the GA level. The results of the measurements showed that GA levels were significantly higher in diabetes-affected plasma and tears compared to controls with a -value < 0.01. A strong correlation of glycated albumin levels was observed for the plasma and tear film in diabetes samples (Pearson coefficient 0.92 with a -value 0.0012). Moreover, the number of GA glycation sites was significantly higher in diabetes-affected plasma and tear comparatively to controls. Among all the glycation sites in plasma albumin, the GA level quantified by lysine 136/137 had a strong correlation with more commonly used lysine 525, suggesting that lysine 136 /137 is an alternative diabetes biomarker in plasma. Overall, our findings demonstrate GA in tears as a biomarker for monitoring diabetes progression, highlighting new possibilities for quick and noninvasive diabetes detection and monitoring.
糖基化是一种自发的非酶糖基化。糖化白蛋白(GA)是血浆中诊断和表征糖尿病的重要生物标志物,可从血浆中被动滤过到泪液中。由于可以非侵入性和可重复地收集这种生物流体,因此泪液是临床诊断研究的重要目标。因此,分析泪膜中的 GA 可提供独立于血液病理变化监测糖尿病进展的信息。由于天然泪膜的体积有限(1-5μL),我们开发了一种小体积测定法,使用纳升液相色谱-离子淌度谱-飞行时间质谱(nanoLC-timsTOF)平台分析受糖尿病影响的人血浆和泪膜中的糖化白蛋白。相对定量包含赖氨酸 525 的肽,赖氨酸 525 是 GA 中的主要糖化位点,并表示为 GA 水平。测量结果表明,与对照相比,糖尿病患者的血浆和泪液中的 GA 水平明显更高(P 值<0.01)。糖尿病样本的血浆和泪膜中的糖化白蛋白水平具有很强的相关性(Pearson 系数为 0.92,P 值为 0.0012)。此外,与对照相比,糖尿病患者的血浆和泪液中的 GA 糖基化位点数量明显更高。在血浆白蛋白的所有糖基化位点中,赖氨酸 136/137 定量的 GA 水平与更常用的赖氨酸 525 具有很强的相关性,这表明赖氨酸 136/137 是血浆中替代的糖尿病生物标志物。总体而言,我们的研究结果表明,泪液中的 GA 可作为监测糖尿病进展的生物标志物,为快速、非侵入性的糖尿病检测和监测提供了新的可能性。