Plasma Proteomes Can Be Reidentifiable and Potentially Contain Personally Sensitive and Incidental Findings.

ABSTRACT: The goal of clinical proteomics is to identify, quantify, and characterize proteins in body fluids or tissue to assist diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of patients. In this way, it is similar to more mature omics technologies, such as genomics, that are increasingly applied in biomedicine. We argue that, similar to those fields, proteomics also faces ethical issues related to the kinds of information that is inherently obtained through sample measurement, although their acquisition was not the primary purpose. Specifically, we demonstrate the potential to identify individuals both by their characteristic, individual-specific protein levels and by variant peptides reporting on coding single nucleotide polymorphisms. Furthermore, it is in the nature of blood plasma proteomics profiling th

SUBMITTER: Geyer PE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7950134 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature