Abstract
BACKGROUND: Influenza, measles, and mumps are common viral infectious diseases in Mongolia. The traditional Mongolian medicine (TMM) classified them as warm disease, and still plays a major role in the diagnoses and treatments. METHODS: To interpret the connotation of the complex theoretical system in TMM with scientific technique, in this study, a high throughput mass spectrometry was used to identify potential protein markers of TMM symptom types. Fifty venous blood samples were drawn from influenza, measles and mumps patients. Differential proteins between samples of patients diagnosed as immature and mature heat in TMM were detected by mass spectrometry. RESULTS: After proteomics analysis, 1500 proteins and 7619 polypeptides were identified and 1323 in total showed differential expression between those 2 symptom types; then enrichment analysis of the differentially expressed proteins revealed the significant biological functions related to the differentially expressed proteins, including cardiomyopathy, several bacterial and parasitic infections, bacterial invasion of epithelial cells, insulin signaling pathway, and regulation of actin cytoskeleton. The network analysis showed that FBP2 and Talin-1 were critical points and might determine the evolution directions of TMM warm disease symptom. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that the identified core differential proteins may be regarded as potential biomarkers, and benefit to evaluate the evolutionary tendency of TMM warm disease symptoms.