Toward the definition of a peptidome signature and protease profile in chronic periodontitis.

Purpose: Chronic periodontitis (CP) is a complex immuno-inflammatory disease that results from preestablished gingivitis. We investigated potential differences in salivary peptidome in health and CP.

Experimental Design: Saliva was collected from nine CP patients and ten healthy subjects, from which five CP and five healthy were enriched following endoProteoFASP approach, separated and identified by nanoHPLC-MALDI-TOF/TOF. Protease prediction was carried out in silico with Proteasix. Parallel gelatin and collagen (I) zymographies were performed to study proteolytic activity in CP.

Results: An association of CP with increased gelatinolytic and collagenolytic activity was observed, which is mainly attributed to metalloproteases, remarkably MMP9. Protease prediction revealed distinct protease profiles in CP and in health. Peptidomic data corroborated the inflammatory status, and demonstrated that intact histatin 1 may play an important role in the defense response against oral pathogens. The application of the endoProteoFASP approach to study the salivary peptidome of CP subjects resulted in the identification of eight surrogate peptide markers, which may be used in multiplex to identify CP. These peptides belong to acidic PRP and to P-B peptide. Particularly, P-B peptide fragments exhibited domains with potential predicted antimicrobial activity, corroborating an antimicrobial function.

Conclusions And Clinical Relevance: The comparison between the salivary peptidome obtained by control and CP samples showed a specific association of eight peptides to CP, with remarkable predicted antimicrobial activity, which should be further validated in studies with large number of subjects.