Characteristic profiling of soluble factors in the cerebrospinal fluid of patients with neurosyphilis.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Soluble inflammatory factors have been investigated in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of neurosyphilis patients with low-throughput technology. This study aimed to illustrate the characteristics of soluble factors profiles in CSF of neurosyphilis patients. METHODS: We measured the concentrations of 45 cytokines/chemokines/growth factors in CSF from 112 untreated syphilis cases, including latent syphilis (LS), asymptomatic neurosyphilis (ANS), meningeal neurosyphilis (MNS), meningovascular neurosyphilis (MVNS), paralytic dementia (PD) and ocular syphilis (OS). RESULTS: Thirty-three differentially expressed soluble factors (DeSFs) were categorized into three clusters. DeSFs scores of cluster 1 and 2 (DeSFS1 and DeSFS2) were positively correlated with elevated neopterin and neurofilament light subunit (NF-L) concentration, respectively. DeSFs scores of cluster 3 were positively correlated with WBC, protein, NF-L and neopterin. Patients with LS, ANS, and OS exhibited an overall lower abundance of DeSFs. PD patients exhibited significantly increased levels of cluster 1 and 3, and the highest total DeSFs score, while patients with MNS and MVNS showed enhanced levels of cluster 2. ROC analysis revealed that DeSFS1 effectively discriminated PD, and DeSFS2 discriminated MNS/MVNS with high accuracy. CONCLUSIONS: Patients with neurosyphilis at different stages have distinctive patterns of soluble factors in CSF, which are correlated with immune status and neuronal damage.