Mass spectrometry for serum differential proteins from Han and Tibetan patients with pulmonary tuberculosis.

Objective To compare the serum differential proteins of Han and Tibetan patients with pulmonary tuberculosis,and those of their corresponding gender-and age-matched non-tuberculosis controls with surface enhanced laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry(SELDI-TOF MS)in order to establish a diagnositic model for tuberculosis differential proteins in these 2 nationalities.Methods A total of 87 sera samples from patients with pulmonary tuberculosis,67 matched non-tuberculosis controls from Han and Tibetan people,54 health individuals,10 acquaired pneumonia and 3 chronic obstructive pulmonary disease were analyzed with SELDI-TOF MS.A training set of spectra derived from analysis of sera from 53 patients with pulmonary tuberculosis(Han 23,Tibetan 30)and 42 non-tuberculosis controls(Han 20,Tibetan 22)were analyzed with a machine learning algorithm called as decision tree boosting.The discovered decision trees were then used to identify an independent testing set of 59 masked samples:34 pulmonary tuberculosis(Han people 15,Tibetan 19),and 25 controls(Han people 16,Tibetan 9).Results The decision tree model of m/z 3193.61 and 4592.11 detected 20 of 23 Han people pulmonary tuberculosis(sensitivity 86.59%)and 17 of 20 Han people controls(specificity 85.00%),and the model of m/z 4821.45 detected 28 of 30 Tibetan pulmonary tuberculosis(sensitivity 93.33%)and 19 of 22 Tibetan controls(specificity 86.36%)in the training set.However,the decision tree model of m/z 4091.98,3398.27,7970.44,4965.51 and 7970.44 gave an accuracy of 92.45% for identifying Tibetan patients from Han people patients.Validation of independent blinded testing set detected 70.96%,71.42%,and 67.92% accuracy,respectively.There were 16 differential protein/peptide peaks between Han and Tibetan patients with pulmonary tuberculosis.Conclusion The above decision model suggests a potential application of SELDI proteomic pattern analysis as a rapid and accurate method to diagnose individuals with pulmonary tuberculosis in both Han people and Tibetan,and there are proteomic differential between pulmonary tuberculosis patients from the 2 nationalities.