Proteomic profiling of serum extracellular vesicles identifies diagnostic markers for echinococcosis.

• Published in: PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases
• Main Authors: Xiaola Guo, Shuai Wang, Junmei Zhang, Rui Li, Yong'e Zhang, Zhengrong Wang, Qingming Kong, William C Cho, Xianghong Ju, Yujuan Shen, Lingqiang Zhang, Haining Fan, Jianping Cao, Yadong Zheng
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2022
• Subjects: Arctic medicine. Tropical medicine; RC955-962; Public aspects of medicine; RA1-1270; Arctic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0010814; https://doaj.org/article/c88e232a4a724acb9d7eab4715636839

Echinococcosis is a parasitic disease caused by the metacestodes of Echinococcus spp. The disease has a long latent period and is largely underdiagnosed, partially because of the lack of effective early diagnostic approaches. Using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, we profiled the serum-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs) of E. multilocularis-infected mice and identified three parasite-origin proteins, thioredoxin peroxidase 1 (TPx-1), transitional endoplasmic reticulum ATPase (TER ATPase), and 14-3-3, being continuously released by the parasites into the sera during the infection via EVs. Using ELISA, both TPx-1 and TER ATPase were shown to have a good performance in diagnosis of experimental murine echinococcosis as early as 10 days post infection and of human echinococcosis compared with that of control. Moreover, TER ATPase and TPx-1 were further demonstrated to be suitable for evaluation of the prognosis of patients with treatment. The present study discovers the potential of TER ATPase and TPx-1 as promising diagnostic candidates for echinococcosis.