Letter to editor re 'Differential protein expression in serum of abdominal aortic aneurysm patients - A proteomic approach'

摘要

In their paper "Differential expression in serum of abdominal aortic aneurysm patients - A proteomic approach", Pulinx et al. mined the proteome of patients with AAAs in search of novel biomarkers. They report elevated factor XII and alpha-1 antitrypsin levels in the serum of patients with progressive aneurysms, but found these proteins to have little ability to predict aneurysm progression above the established marker, AAA diameter.I propose that the authors were never likely to discover a putative biomarker using this technique. DIGE has been utilised by scientists across medicine and vascular surgery [including our group] for many years, and although it has provided insight into disease pathogenesis, it has failed to discover a biomarker translatable to clinical practice.Serum is an unstable sensitive protein preparation, which can modify depending on harvest factors including time-of-day, ambient temperature, current health, sex, and age, all factors which have not been controlled for in this study. Given this principle flaw, and the most significant finding being increased expression of ubiquitous Albumin in patients with large AAAs [P = 0.007], the results must be interpreted with caution.