Differential expression of proteome in aqueous humor in patients with and without glaucoma. / Expresión diferencial del proteoma en humor acuoso de pacientes con y sin glaucoma.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To determine quantitative and qualitative differences of aqueous humor proteome in patients with and without glaucoma. METHOD: Observational, descriptive and cross-sectional study of 12 patients (8 men; 4 women) with and without glaucoma. There are 3 groups of minority proteins with serum equimolar contribution of each of the patients. Specimens were obtained during cataract surgery from patients without glaucoma (performed with retrobulbar anaesthesia [cataract retrobulbar patient -CRP-;n=4] or topical [cataract topical patient -CTP-; n=4]), or from patients with glaucoma (performed with retrobulbar anaesthesia [glaucoma retrobulbar patient -GRP-; n=4]). The humor proteome samples were frozen at -80°C until processing by trypsin digestion to obtain tryptic peptides, and then performing liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) to obtain the proteome and its differential expression between groups. Statistical analysis was performed using the SPSS v.17 program. RESULTS: The study included 12 patients, aged (mean±standard deviation) 74.50±9.53 years. Concentrations obtained 0.48±0.25µg/µl for CRP, 0.28±0.04µg/µl for CTP, and 0.35±0.16µg/µl for GRP. A total of 309 proteins were identified, of which 205, 210, and 182 were in CRP, CTP, and GRP, respectively. A total of 114 proteins were common to all three groups, 50 were exclusive to CRP, 58 to CTP, and 27 to GRP. CONCLUSIONS: In this pilot study, a quantitative difference was found in the protein expression of humor among patients with glaucoma, there being 27 proteins unique to patients with glaucomatous disease.