Hepatitis Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Hepatitis, including details on hepatitis a, b, c, causes, symptoms.

Serum proteomic-based analysis for the identification of a potential serological marker for autoimmune hepatitis.

Lu F, Xia Q, Ma Y, Yuan G, Yan H, Qian L, Hu M, Wang M, Lu H, Wang H, Liu B, Xue Y, Wang H, Li M, Shen B, Guo N

School of Preclinical and Forensic Medicine, West China Medical Center of Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, PR China.

In the present study, by using a serologic proteomic analysis, we identified phosphoglycerate mutase isozyme B (PGAM-B) as a putative target of autoantibodies in autoimmune hepatitis (AIH). To evaluate whether the identified autoantigen is crucial for AIH, we cloned PGAM-B cDNA and expressed the recombinant protein in Escherichia coli. The soluble PGAM-B was purified by affinity chromatography and used as a coating antigen to determine the frequency of the PGAM-B-autoantibodies (PGAM-B-Abs) in patients with AIH and primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) as well as chronic hepatitis B (CHB), chronic hepatitis C (CHC), and healthy donors by ELISA. Our study showed that the autoantibody to PGAM-B was predominantly present in AIH patients and 70.04% (50/71) of the tested AIH sera reacted to PGAM-B. The frequency of autoantibodies to PGAM-B is much higher in patients with AIH than in patients with PBC, CHB, CHC, and normal control. The data were further confirmed by using 1-DE Western blot analysis. Our study presents the first description of this protein as a candidate of diagnostic marker for AIH.

Published 24 January 2008 in Biochem Biophys Res Commun, 367(2): 284-90.
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