An Exploratory Study of Host Plasma Proteomic Signatures that Distinguish Secondary and Early Latent Syphilis in Adults

Chou C.; Morton S.R.; Konda K.A.; Vargas S.; Reyes-Diaz M.; Vasquez F.; Caceres C.F.; Klausner J.D.; Toombs T.; Ahmad R.; Allan-Blitz L.-T. · Open Forum Infectious Diseases (2026) · DOI: 10.1093/ofid/ofag498

Resumen

Syphilis diagnostics struggle to distinguish active from treated disease. Using tandem-mass-tag proteomics on plasma from 10 secondary and early latent syphilis cases and 8 matched controls, we identified 54 differentially regulated proteins categorized under several biological pathways. Those exploratory findings support proteomics as a tool for developing novel syphilis diagnostics. © The Author(s) 2026. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Infectious Diseases Society of America. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Instituciones: Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia