Comparative proteomic analysis of plasma of children with congenital heart disease.

Congenital heart disease is one of the largest class of birth defects. Eight subjects with ventricular septal defect (VSD, a kind of congenital heart disease) and 11 health children were enrolled in tandem mass tags label-based quantitative proteomic analysis to compare plasma proteins differentially abundance. A total of 66 proteins were significantly upregulated or downregulated in VSD patients compared with healthy children. These proteins were involved in pathways linked to platelet activation, fructose and mannose metabolism, complement and coagulation cascades, glycolysis/gluconeogenesis, regulation of actin cytoskeleton, and carbon metabolism. The amount of ten proteins changed significantly (p < 0.05) in newly recruited 30 VSD compared with 15 control children, which were validated by ELISA. The areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve values of fructose-bisphosphate aldolase B (ALDOB) and thymosin beta-4 (Tβ4) were higher than those of other candidate proteins. ALDOB and Tβ4 might be potential biomarkers applied for identifying VSD in the further works.