Xerostomia Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Xerostomia, including details on dry mouth, treatment, causes, lack of saliva.

Diagnostic potential of tear proteomic patterns in Sjögren's syndrome.

Tomosugi N, Kitagawa K, Takahashi N, Sugai S, Ishikawa I

Division of Nephrology, Department of Internal Medicine, Knanazawa Medical University, 920-0265 Ishikawa, Japan. tomosugi@kanazawa-med.ac.jp

Histological and functional changes of the lacrimal gland might be reflected in proteomic patterns in tear fluids. In this study, we carried out a determination of the disease biomarkers in tear fluid for Sjögren's syndrome (SS) and a performance of noninvasive diagnostic test based on the proteomic patterns. Thirty-one SS patients and 57 control subjects were enrolled to this study. Their details were 23 cases with primary SS, 8 with secondary SS, 14 with dry eyes, 22 with miscellaneous ocular diseases, and 21 of healthy volunteers. Protein profiling in tear fluids was identified by surface enhanced laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (SELDI-TOF-MS). Multiple protein changes were reproducibly detected in the primary SS group, including 10 potential novel biomarkers. Seven of the biomarkers (2094, 2743, 14191, 14702, 16429, 17453, 17792 m/z) were down-regulated and 3 biomarkers (3483, 4972, 10860 m/z) were up-regulated in primary SS group, comparing to the protein profiles of control subjects. When cutoff value of SS down-score was set less than 0.5, this result yielded 87% sensitivity and 100% specificity. The positive predictive value for this sample set was 100%. There was a significant inverse correlation between SS down-scores and epithelial damages of the ocular surface in primary SS patients. These findings support the potential of proteomic pattern technology in tear fluids as the noninvasive diagnostic test for primary SS.

Published 14 June 2005 in J Proteome Res, 4(3): 820-5.
Full-text of this article is available online (may require subscription).

© 2005-2008 Xerostomia Research Today. All Rights Reserved.