posted on 2014-12-05, 00:00authored byLucía Lourido, Valentina Calamia, Jesús Mateos, Patricia Fernández-Puente, Juan Fernández-Tajes, Francisco J Blanco, Cristina Ruiz-Romero
Osteoarthritis
(OA) is the most common rheumatic pathology and is characterized primarily
by articular cartilage degradation. Despite its high prevalence, there
is no effective therapy to slow disease progression or regenerate
the damaged tissue. Therefore, new diagnostic and monitoring tests
for OA are urgently needed, which would also promote the development
of alternative therapeutic strategies. In the present study, we have
performed an iTRAQ-based quantitative proteomic analysis of secretomes
from healthy human articular cartilage explants, comparing their protein
profile to those from unwounded (early disease) and wounded (advanced
disease) zones of osteoarthritic tissue. This strategy allowed us
to identify a panel of 76 proteins that are distinctively released
by the diseased tissue. Clustering analysis allowed the classification
of proteins according to their different profile of release from cartilage.
Among these proteins, the altered release of osteoprotegerin (decreased
in OA) and periostin (increased in OA), both involved in bone remodelling
processes, was verified in further analyses. Moreover, periostin was
also increased in the synovial fluid of OA patients. Altogether, the
present work provides a novel insight into the mechanisms of human
cartilage degradation and a number of new cartilage-characteristic
proteins with possible biomarker value for early diagnosis and prognosis
of OA.