An Exploratory Study of Host Plasma Proteomic Signatures that Distinguish Active Syphilis in Adults

Syphilis remains a major public health concern. However, current serologic assays are limited in their ability to distinguish active from previously treated disease. We applied tandem mass tag-based quantitative proteomics to plasma from 10 adults with active syphilis and 10 age- and gender-matched non-diseased controls. We identified 54 differentially regulated proteins (36 upregulated, 18 downregulated). Those proteins map to immune and inflammatory responses, acute-phase signaling, coagulation and vascular pathways, and cellular stress processes. Three sets of between 2-5 proteins achieved > 99% discrimination between cases and controls. Our exploratory findings support proteomics as a potential tool to develop novel syphilis diagnostics.