Plasma proteomic data can contain personally identifiable, sensitive information and incidental findings.

Plasma proteomic data can contain personally identifiable, sensitive information and incidental findings. Mol Cell Proteomics. 2020 Dec 17;: Authors: Geyer PE, Porsdam Mann S, Treit PV, Mann M 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 that it broadly reports on the health status of an individual - beyond the disease under investigation. Finally, we show that private and potentially sensitive information, such as ethnicity and pregnancy status, can increasingly be derived from proteomics data. Although this is potentially valuable not only to the individual, but also for biomedical research, it raises ethical questions similar to the incidental findings obtained through other omics te...
Source: Molecular and Cellular Proteomics : MCP - Category: Molecular Biology Authors: Tags: Mol Cell Proteomics Source Type: research