Table 1.
Physical characteristics of patients with normal and prediabetes/diabetes groups with and without abdominal obesity.
Fig 1.
Representative silver-stained two-dimensional electrophoresis (2-DE) images for serum samples from patients with prediabetes/diabetes compared with healthy donors.
(A) Differentially expressed spots are indicated with arrows (Red, up-regulated; Blue, down regulated) in the 2-DE image, (B) comparison of the regulatory patterns of serum proteins in the six groups. Group 1 = normal, Group 2 = normal with abdominal obesity, Group 3 = pre-diabetes, Group 4 = pre-diabetes with abdominal obesity, Group 5 = diabetes, Group 6 = diabetes with abdominal obesity. See Table 1 for patient details.
Table 2.
List of identified proteins showing differential expression between normal and prediabetes/diabetes groups.
Fig 2.
Differentially regulated proteins in the serum of patients with prediabetes/diabetes compared with healthy donors.
(A) Normalized graphs of 2-DE spots showing relative upward/downward trends in regulation (G1–G6 indicate patient groups), (B) validation of target proteins linked to abdominal obesity and diabetes. Significant differences among groups (where, each Group was compared to Group 1) were determined by ANOVA, *p < 0.05 or **p < 0.01. (C) Expression levels of pro-inflammatory cytokine genes, TNFα and IFNγ in serum of patients with prediabetes/diabetes compared with healthy donors. Significant differences between normal (Groups 1 and 2) and prediabetes (Groups 3 and 4)/diabetes (Groups 5 and 6) groups were determined by ANOVA; *p < 0.05.
Fig 3.
Networks generated by the String database analysis using up- and down-regulated proteins (A) and functional classification of the proteins in the network, where proteins related to lipid transport (red), regulation of plasma lipoprotein particle levels (green), and fat digestion/absorption (blue) are highlighted (B).
Table 3.
Summary of the functional classification of proteins in the network analysis.