AI Article Synopsis
- Heroin addiction is a complex chronic disease often linked with other disorders, making prevention and treatment challenging.
- Using advanced techniques, researchers identified four serum proteins and found increased levels of transthyretin and T4 in heroin addicts compared to healthy controls.
- The study also revealed a higher frequency of anhaptoglobinemia in heroin addicts, suggesting potential risks associated with heroin use.
Article Abstract
Heroin addiction is a chronic, complex disease, often accompanied by other concomitant disorders, which may encumber effective prevention and treatment. To explore the differences in expression profiles of serum proteins in control and heroin addicts, we used two-dimensional electrophoresis coupled to MALDI-TOF/TOF, and identified 4 proteins of interest. Following validation of the increase in serum transthyretin, we assessed serum levels of thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), triiodothyronine (T3), and thyroxine (T4), and observed a robust increase in T4 in heroin addicts compared to controls. In addition, we performed haptoglobin (Hp) phenotyping, and showed that the frequency of Hp0 (serum devoid of haptoglobin) was significantly higher in heroin addicts. Altogether, these findings indicated that: (1) thyroid hormone imbalance is present in heroin addicts; (2) anhaptoglobinemia (Hp0) might a risk factor or a deleterious effect of heroin abuse.
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Source |
|---|---|
| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3990700 | PMC |
| http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0095345 | PLOS |
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