Mesencephalic astrocyte-derived neurotrophic factor: a potential diagnostic marker in human sepsis-associated lung injury

Systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) commonly considered as the first step in the sepsis cascade. To evaluate the diagnostic value and potential mechanism of serum MANF in sepsis-associated lung injury (SALI), 15 adult SALI patients and 15 age- and sex-matched SIRS patients were enrolled to measure serum MANF levels by sandwich enzyme-linked immune-sorbent assay and the laboratory indexes including C-reactive protein (CRP), procalcitonin (PCT), and interleukin-6 (IL-6) were collected. MANF and IL-6 levels showed significant differences between groups (P < 0.05), and the area under the curve (AUC) values of MANF and IL-6 were 0.822 and 0.815. The combination of MANF with IL-6 exhibited improved predictive accuracy for SALI. Furthermore, we found that there is a protein interaction network between MANF and all of these overlap targets between ferroptosis-related genes (FRGs) and SALI by bioinformatics analysis. MANF could be a promising biomarker for the differential diagnosis of SALI and SIRS.