Experiencing traumatic childhood is a risk factor for developing substance use disorder (SUD). SUD patients with a history of traumatic childhood often develop a subtype of SUD that is characterised by earlier onset, high relapse rate and more severe symptoms. To date, only accurate psychometric assessment can aid the proper diagnosis but still no objective measure is available to support the stratification of SUD patients. We have recently shown that peripheral blood in SUD patients can store in the long-term information regarding the quality of early life. Specifically, we identified alterations in the expression level of few inflammatory genes and cytokines that could discriminate SUD patients with or without the experience of traumatic childhood. Thus, a more accurate investigation to characterise these alterations is needed to understand the impact of traumatic childhood on peripheral systems and its interaction with substance abuse. Here we propose to perform an unbiased genome-wide scale analysis of protein in blood plasma of healthy controls or SUD patients during abstinence. The analysis of proteome will compare the level of expression of all proteins that are present in individual plasma samples. These results combined with the psychometric evaluation will help to identify a number of proteins that are altered in SUD patients also based on the quality of early life. This experiment will provide insights into the long-term impact of traumatic childhood on biological systems and will identify peripheral biomarkers in SUD patients that may represent indicators of increased SUD severity, and eventually predictors of relapse.
The proteomic analyses of human blood and blood-derived products (e.g. plasma) offers an attractive avenue to translate research progress from the laboratory into the clinic.
Proteomic analysis of plasma samples from SUD patients has been so far investigated primarily to assay the impact that history of drug use had on peripheral systems. None of the related studies to our knowledge has explored the influence of TC on the drug use-derived alterations.
Thus, the proposed project will potentially help the advancement of personalized medicine applications, proposing the use of whole blood as a form of ¿liquid biopsy¿ application, to help the stratification of SUD patients and support tailored protocols of intervention.
Moreover, the results obtained from the proteomic analysis will likely set up the beginning of new research avenues, fitting perfectly with the scope of the proposed starting grant.