ABSTRACT
Objective To assess the efficacy of using four kinds of proteins / peptides to distinguish the tuberculosis patients from healthy people. Methods A, B, C and D were used to represent four proteins /peptides with 1 060, 1 944, 2 081 and 3 954 of mass to charge ratio (m / z) in serum, respectively. Levels A, B, C and D in serum of 57 patients with tuberculosis and 30 healthy people were determined by using the surface-enhanced laser desorption-ionization time of flight mass spectrometry (SELDI-TOF-MS). Then the differences of levels of f A, B, C and D were anlyzed between tuberculosis patients and healthy people. The efficacy of distinguishing tuberculosis patient from healthy people were evaluated by using diagnostic test evaluation method. Results (1) The levels of A, B, C and D were 1 ± 11, 1 597 ± 3 102, 460 ± 765 and 1 208 ± 1 003 in tuberculosis patients, while they were 123 ± 201, 47 ± 98, 36 ± 93 and 397 ± 355 in healthy people. (2) The area under the receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve was 0.644, 0.848, 0.735 and 0.810 respectively. The serum levels of A, B, C and D could be used to distinguish tuberculosis patient from healthy people and the cut-off values of A, B, C and D were ≤166, ≥318, ≥48 and ≥728, respectively. Conclusions B, C and D have better performances to distinguish tuberculosis patients from healthy people , which may be regarded as new promising candidate markers for diagnosis of tuberculosis.