The serum protein responses to treatment with Xiaoke Pill and Glibenclamide in type 2 diabetes patients

Aim The Xiaoke Pill containing Chinese herb extracts and Glibenclamide, is used in therapy for type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), and is effective in reducing the risk of hypoglycemia and improving diabetes symptoms compared with Glibenclamide. We describe a quantitative proteomics project to measure the T2DM serum proteome response to the Xiaoke Pill and Glibenclamide. Methods Based on a recently conducted 48-week clinical trial comparing the safety and efficacy of Glibenclamide (n = 400) and Xiaoke Pill (n = 400), after matching for age, sex, BMI, drug dose and whether hypoglycemia occurred, 32 patients were selected for the serum based proteomic analysis and divided into four groups (with/without hypoglycemia treated with Xiaoke Pill or Glibenclamide, n = 8 for each group). We screened the differential serum proteins related to treatments and the onset of hypoglycemia using the iTRAQ labeling quantitative proteomics technique. Baseline and follow-up samples were used. Results The quantitative proteomics experiments demonstrated that 25 and 21 proteins differed upon treatment with the Xiaoke Pill in patients without and with hypoglycemia, respectively, while 24 and 25 proteins differed upon treatment with Glibenclamide in patients without and with hypoglycemia, respectively. The overlap of different proteins between the patients with and without hypoglycemia given the same drug treatment was much greater than between the patients given different drug treatments. Conclusions We conclude that the serum proteins response to the two different anti-diabetic drug treatments may serve as a sensitive biomarker for evaluation of the therapeutic effects and continue investigations into the mechanism. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12014-017-9154-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.