Proteomic Testing May Enable NIV Diagnosis of Respiratory Pathologies in Preterm Newborns

A team of researchers is developing its new method for noninvasive diagnosis and therapeutic response monitoring of conditions in preterm newborns based on marker sets now identified by proteome analysis of urine samples.

The majority of patients in neonatal intensive care units are premature babies, who often have respiratory conditions. It is important to distinguish whether their illness is due to infection or a failure in the developmental process. The composition of biological fluids (e.g. blood, urine, saliva) is highly complex, and most current diagnostic procedures for neonatal intensive therapy include sample collections that are invasive (e.g. biopsy) or semi-invasive (e.g. blood sampling).


Using high-performance mass spectrometry (HPMS; more specifically LC-MS/MS), experts from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT; Moscow, Russia) are identifying different proteins and determining their concentrations in target fluids. Studies of the urinary proteome in pediatrics, especially in neonatology, are limited. In the new study, the team investigated the urine proteome of preterm newborns with respiratory pathologies. In order to further specify the defined infant-specific dataset, proteins were compared with the urinary proteome of healthy adults (men and pregnant women).

As a result bioinformatic processing of the HPMS data, the team singled out 36 proteins that indicate if respiratory pathologies are infectious (congenital pneumonia) or non-infectious (tachypnea, infant respiratory distress syndrome).

“In our pilot study, we succeeded in defining the core urinary proteome and proteins specific for infants and pathological conditions. We are pioneers in the non-invasive identification of urinary biomarkers diagnosing respiratory conditions in newborns. The results are optimistic and will serve as a platform to move forward in developing a method of monitoring conditions in newborns,” said team leader Prof. Evgeny Nikolaev, head of MIPT’s Laboratory of Ionic and Molecular Physics.

The study, by Starodubtseva NL, Kononikhin AS, et al, was published June 14, 2016, online ahead of print in the Journal of Proteomics.

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