Abstract
Purpose
This study was designed to investigate the association between fibulin-1(FBLN1) and thyroid-associated ophthalmopathy (TAO).
Method
The plasma FBLN1 levels were measured in 80 participants, including 30 active TAO patients, 25 inactive TAO patients, and 25 Graves disease (GD) patients without TAO using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA).
Results
TAO patients had significantly higher TRAb level than GD patients (p < 0.05). The active TAO patients consumed more tobacco and had higher CAS than inactive TAO patients (all p < 0.05). No significant differences were found in age, sex, and the level of FT3, FT4, and TSH between TAO and GD patients, and between the active and inactive TAO patients (all p > 0.05).
The plasma FBLN1 level in TAO patients was higher than that in GD patients, and that in active patients was higher than that in inactive patients (all p < 0.05). Furthermore, the plasma FBLN1 level showed strong association with clinical activity score (CAS) of TAO (r = 0.67, p < 0.01). By receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, FBLN1 demonstrated good efficiency for predicting disease activity at the cut-off value > 625.33 pg/ml with a sensitivity of 93.3% and a specificity of 88.0% (AUC:0.92, p < 0.01).
Conclusion
The plasma FBLN1 levels correlated with TAO activity and a value >625.33 pg/ml was associated with active disease. Our results suggest that the plasma FBLN1 level could be a novel biomarker for predicting disease activity of TAO.
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Data availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.
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Funding
This study is supported by Key projects of Chongqing Natural Science Foundation (NO:cstc2020jcyj-zdxmX0016).
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JL and CL contributed to the conception of the study. HH, XJ, and ZF performed the experiment. HH and JL performed the data analyses and wrote the paper. LL and XZ contributed to the diagnosis and assessment of TAO.
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The research was conducted ethically following the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki. The study was approved by the First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University Ethical Committee.
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41433_2022_2318_MOESM1_ESM.doc
Heatmap of the log2 Fold Change (logFC) of differential expression proteins in the plasma of TAO and GD group, through Tandem mass tag proteomics(TMT).
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Hu, H., Liang, L., Zheng, X. et al. Fibulin-1: a novel biomarker for predicting disease activity of the thyroid-associated ophthalmopathy. Eye 37, 2216–2219 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41433-022-02318-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41433-022-02318-6
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