Potential Biomarkers for Post-Stroke Cognitive Impairment: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Stroke is a primary debilitating disease in adults, occurring in 15 million individuals each year and causing high mortality and disability rates. The latest estimate revealed that stroke is currently the second leading cause of death worldwide. Post-stroke cognitive impairment (PSCI), one of the major complications after stroke, is frequently underdiagnosed. However, stroke has been reported to increase the risk of cognitive impairment by at least five to eight times. In recent decades, peripheral blood molecular biomarkers for stroke have emerged as diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic targets. In this study, we aimed to evaluate some blood-derived proteins for stroke, especially related to brain damage and cognitive impairments, by conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis and discussing the possibility of these proteins as biomarkers for PSCI. Articles published before 26 July 2021 were searched in PubMed, Embase, the Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library to identify all relevant studies reporting blood biomarkers in patients with stroke. Among 1820 articles, 40 were finally identified for this study. We meta-analyzed eight peripheral biomarker candidates: homocysteine (Hcy), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), C-reactive protein (CRP), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG), uric acid, and glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c). The Hcy, CRP, TC, and LDL-C levels were significantly higher in patients with PSCI than in the non-PSCI group; however, the HDL-C, TG, uric acid, and HbA1c levels were not different between the two groups. Based on our findings, we suggest the Hcy, CRP, TC, and LDL-C as possible biomarkers in patients with post-stroke cognitive impairment. Thus, certain blood proteins could be suggested as effective biomarkers for PSCI.

Interaction of ionic liquids with human serum albumin in the view of bioconcentration: a preliminary study

Bioaccumulation potential is critical in PBT and risk assessment of chemicals. However, for ionic liquids (ILs), this aspect remains neglected. It is especially important to fill this gap, because for this group of compounds, existing data confirm their risk of being environmentally persistent and toxicity. Moreover, considering preliminary reports on the interactions of ILs with lipids, it may be assumed that ILs have a higher potential for bioaccumulation than indicated by previous estimations built upon octanol–water partition coefficients. Moreover, the bioconcentration of ionizable chemical compounds may also be strongly related to plasma protein contents. Therefore, in this work, the affinity of a set of imidazolium cations and organic anions, and their combination to human serum albumin (HSA) was determined. The obtained results reveal that both cations and anions can be strongly bound to HSA, and blood proteins might play an important role in overall bioaccumulation. Furthermore, it was observed that HSA binding properties towards IL cations depend on the hydrophobicity of cations. The obtained data also provide indication that cation–anion interaction may affect ILs ions affinity to HSA.

Acute phase proteins in veterinary medicine: A review

The acute phase proteins (APPs) are a group of blood proteins that contribute to restoring homeostasis and limiting microbial growth in an antibody-independent manner in animals which are exposed to different pathological conditions like infection, inflammation, surgical trauma and stress. In the last two decades, many advances have been made in monitoring APPs in both farm and companion animals for clinical and experimental purposes. Also, the mechanism of the APPs response is receiving attention in veterinary science in connection with the innate immune systems of animals. This review describes the many of new results of research and role APPs in farm animal, with special reference to their functions, types, induction and regulatory expression, some of biological functions, and their current and future applications to veterinary diagnosis and animal production.

Quo vadis blood protein adductomics?

Chemicals are measured regularly in air, food, the environment, and the workplace. Biomonitoring of chemicals in biological fluids is a tool to determine the individual exposure. Blood protein adducts of xenobiotics are a marker of both exposure and the biologically effective dose. Urinary metabolites and blood metabolites are short term exposure markers. Stable hemoglobin adducts are exposure markers of up to 120 days. Blood protein adducts are formed with many xenobiotics at different sites of the blood proteins. Newer methods apply the techniques developed in the field of proteomics. Larger adducted peptides with 20 amino acids are used for quantitation. Unfortunately, at present the methods do not reach the limits of detection obtained with the methods looking at single amino acid adducts or at chemically cleaved adducts. Therefore, to progress in the field new approaches are needed.

Dysproteinemia in blistering dermatoses

In the pathogenesis of pemphigus, a large place is occupied by toxic, dystrophic changes and metabolic disorders. Proceeding from this, we studied blood proteins by paper horizontal electrophoresis on an EFA-1 apparatus.

Loss of Endothelial Barrier Function in the Inflammatory Setting: Indication for a Cytokine-Mediated Post-Transcriptional Mechanism by Virtue of Upregulation of miRNAs miR-29a-3p, miR-29b-3p, and miR-155-5p

Dysfunction of the endothelial barrier plays a central role in the pathogenesis of both acute and chronic inflammatory processes such as sepsis or atherosclerosis. Due to attenuation of endothelial cell contacts, there is an increased transfer of blood proteins and fluid into the surrounding tissue, which relates to edema formation and distribution disorders. However, the mechanisms underlying these responses are not fully understood. In this study, we used human endothelial cells to mimic the loss of barrier function in an inflammatory milieu. We found that a weakened endothelial barrier after cytokine stimulation was accompanied by a significantly changed transcriptome. Apparent was a depletion of mRNAs encoding cell adhesion molecules. Furthermore, we found that cytokine treatment of endothelial cells induced upregulation of miR-29a-3p, miR-29b-3p, and miR-155-5p. miRNAs are known to negatively affect stability and translational efficiency of target mRNAs. Remarkably, miR-29a-3p, miR-29b-3p, and miR-155-5p have already been described to target the mRNAs of central tight and adherent junction proteins including F11 receptor, claudin 1, β-catenin, p120-catenin, and eplin. This taken together points to the existence of a posttranscriptional mechanism for expression inhibition of central adhesion proteins, which is triggered by inflammatory cytokines and mediated by miR-29a-3p, miR-29b-3p, and miR-155-5p.

Human Serum Extracellular Vesicle Proteomic Profile Depends on the Enrichment Method Employed

The proteomic profiling of serum samples supposes a challenge due to the large abundance of a few blood proteins in comparison with other circulating proteins coming from different tissues and cells. Although the sensitivity of protein detection has increased enormously in the last years, specific strategies are still required to enrich less abundant proteins and get rid of abundant proteins such as albumin, lipoproteins, and immunoglobulins. One of the alternatives that has become more promising is to characterize circulating extracellular vesicles from serum samples that have great interest in biomedicine. In the present work, we enriched the extracellular vesicles fraction from human serum by applying different techniques, including ultracentrifugation, size-exclusion chromatography, and two commercial precipitation methods based on different mechanisms of action. To improve the performance and efficacy of the techniques to promote purity of the preparations, we have employed a small volume of serum samples (<100 mL). The comparative proteomic profiling of the enriched preparations shows that ultracentrifugation procedure yielded a larger and completely different set of proteins than other techniques, including mitochondrial and ribosome related proteins. The results showed that size exclusion chromatography carries over lipoprotein associated proteins, while a polymer-based precipitation kit has more affinity for proteins associated with granules of platelets. The precipitation kit that targets glycosylation molecules enriches differentially protein harboring glycosylation sites, including immunoglobulins and proteins of the membrane attack complex.

222 Corn-expressed Phytase Modulates Serum Amino Acids and Proteomics Profiles in Nursery Pigs Fed with Low-protein, -calcium, and -phosphorous Diets

Feeding pigs with very low-protein (VLP) and low-phosphorous (P) diets may be useful for decreasing the nutrients excretion to the environment; however, this practice negatively impacts the animals’ growth performance. A beneficial effect of corn-expressed phytase (CEP) on growth performance of pigs fed with VLP diets was shown by our group recently. Little is known whether this improvement is related with alterations in profile of blood proteins and amino acids (AA). The objective of this study was to investigate whether supplementation of VLP, low-calcium (Ca) and low-P diets with a CEP can influence the serum AA and proteomics profiles in pigs. Forty-eight weaned barrows were subjected into one of the following groups (n = 8/group) for 4 weeks: positive control (PC), negative control-reduced protein (NC), NC+low-dose CEP, i.e 2,000 FTU/kg (LD), NC+high-dose CEP, i.e. 4,000 FTU/kg (HD), LD with reduced Ca/P (LDR), and HD with reduced Ca/P (HDR). At week 4, blood samples were collected from all pigs. Compared to PC, NC reduced the serum leucine and phenylalanine concentrations; however, LD recovered their levels. Using trypsinolysis and mass spectrometry, 703 serum proteins were identified and quantified, wherein 25 were found to be differentially expressed among groups. Hierarchical clustering showed a clear separation in proteins identified among dietary groups. Compared to NC, 23 and 24 proteins were found to be differentially expressed in serum of LD and HD groups, respectively, with some important proteins in growth regulation such as SELENOP being upregulated and the IGFBP family being downregulated in these groups. A positive correlation was detected between growth and abundance of BGN, TLN1, PDLIM1 and COL1A2 that are involved in bone mineralization and muscle structure development. Thus, CEP improved the serum profile of some essential AA and affected the expression of proteins involved in regulation of growth in pigs fed with VLP diets.