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Clinical and Diagnostic Laboratory Immunology, January 2005, p. 68-75, Vol. 12, No. 1
1071-412X/05/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/CDLI.12.1.68-75.2005
Copyright © 2005, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Medical University of South Carolina,1 Department of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology-Metabolism-Nutrition, Medical University of South Carolina, and Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center, Charleston,2 Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina3
Received 15 June 2004/ Returned for modification 18 August 2004/ Accepted 8 September 2004
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(carboxymethyl) lysine (CML)-modified LDL, and advanced glycosylation end product (AGE)-modified LDL were obtained by immunization of rabbits with in vitro-modified human LDL preparations. After absorption of apolipoprotein B (ApoB) antibodies, we obtained antibodies specific for each modified lipoprotein with unique patterns of reactivity. MDA-LDL antibodies reacted strongly with MDA-LDL and also with oxLDL. CML-LDL antibodies reacted strongly with CML-LDL and also AGE-LDL. oxLDL antibodies reacted with oxLDL but not with MDA-LDL, and AGE-LDL antibodies reacted with AGE-LDL but not with CML-LDL. Capture assays were set with each antiserum, and we tested their ability to capture ApoB-containing lipoproteins isolated from precipitated immune complexes (IC) and from the supernatants remaining after IC precipitation (free lipoproteins). All antibodies captured lipoproteins contained in IC more effectively than free lipoproteins. Analysis of lipoproteins in IC by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry showed that they contained MDA-LDL and CML-LDL in significantly higher concentrations than free lipoproteins. A significant correlation (r = 0.706, P < 0.019) was obtained between the MDA concentrations determined by chemical analysis and by the capture assay of lipoproteins present in IC. In conclusion, we have developed capture assays for different LDL modifications in human ApoB/E lipoprotein-rich fractions isolated from precipitated IC. This approach obviates the interference of IC in previously reported modified LDL assays and allows determination of the degree of modification of LDL with greater accuracy. |
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-amino groups of lysine residues of apolipoprotein B (ApoB) (21, 22, 33). Advanced glycosylation also affects LDL (19). This process involves a chain of chemical reactions that starts with the covalent, nonenzymatic addition of reducing sugars to protein amino groups (Schiff base and Amadori adducts). Additional reactions take place leading to the formation of a heterogeneous family of sugar-amino acid adducts collectively known as "advanced glycosylation end products" (AGE) (31), including AGE-modified LDL (AGE-LDL).
Both oxidized LDL (oxLDL) and AGE-LDL have been shown to have proatherogenic and proinflammatory properties (11). This has led to a burst of interest in the development of techniques for their assay in human sera. The immunogenicity of modified lipoproteins first reported by Steinbrecher et al. has been well documented in studies involving immunization of laboratory animals with in vitro-modified lipoproteins (23). The immunogenicity of these modifications in experimental animals allowed the production of monoclonal antibodies specific for MDA and HNE-lysine which reacted with oxLDL prepared in vitro, as well as with LDL isolated from atherosclerotic plaques (16, 33). AGE-modified proteins including LDL (AGE-LDL) have also been shown to be immunogenic (6). Antibodies raised in laboratory animals have been used for the detection of AGE-modified proteins in serum (15) and tissues (14, 15). Human autoantibodies to modified LDL have also been extensively characterized (28) and shown to recognize primarily MDA-modified LDL and N
(carboxymethyl) lysine (CML)-modified LDL (29). Some groups have proposed the assay of such autoantibodies as a surrogate measurement for modified LDL, but this approach is riddled with inaccuracies because of the interference caused by the formation of antigen-antibody complexes involving modified forms of LDL and the corresponding antibodies (28). We have shown in previous studies that LDL-containing immune complexes (LDL-IC) can be precipitated with 4% polyethylene glycol (PEG), and that while modified forms of LDL are easily measurable in PEG precipitates, very little modified LDL remains soluble after IC precipitation. The enzymoimmunoassay techniques developed by different groups for the detection of modified forms of LDL and AGE-modified proteins (7, 9, 15, 24, 25) attempt to avoid interference of IC and other confounding factors by a variety of means. While most groups will trust the ability of immobilized antibodies to preferentially capture and retain modified LDL at high sample dilutions, this may not be necessarily the case when monoclonal antibodies are used for capture of modified LDL. Other groups have proposed different approaches to this issue, such as using competition between bound modified LDL and the unknown LDL in test samples to which antibody is added (5), using purified LDL instead of whole serum or plasma (8) or adding sodium dodecyl sulfate (32) or 4% PEG (26) to the samples. However, none of the groups provided evidence for the effective dissociation of IC as a consequence of the assay conditions.
We have demonstrated that rabbits immunized with MDA-LDL, copper-oxidized LDL (oxLDL), AGE-LDL, and CML-LDL produce antibodies that recognize each one of these modifications individually. For example, rabbit oxLDL antibodies show only a marginal degree of reactivity with MDA-LDL, rabbit MDA-LDL antibodies react only weakly with oxLDL, and rabbit AGE-LDL antibodies do not react with CML-LDL (29). Using these antibodies, we have developed capture assays whose specificity and ability to capture in vivo-modified human LDL, isolated from circulating IC, have been demonstrated.
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Preparation of modified proteins.
oxLDL was prepared according to our modification (10) of the protocol described by Steinbrecher (22). LDL was diluted in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) to a protein concentration of 1.5 mg/ml and incubated with 40 µmol of copper chloride (CuCl2) per liter. The degree of oxidation was monitored continuously by fluorescence emission with a luminescence spectrophotometer (SLM-AMINCO Series 2; Spectronic Instruments, Rochester, N.Y.). LDL oxidation was stopped 4 to 6 h after the fluorescence values reached the peak (
1.1 fluorescence units). On average, this corresponds to the following degree of modification: 4 to 7 mmol of MDA per mol of lysine (0.4 to 0.7% modification of lysine residues), 0.8 mmol of CML per mol of lysine (0.08% modification of lysine residues), and 0.25 mmol of N
(carboxyethyl) lysine (CEL) per ml of lysine (0.025% modification of lysine residues).
AGE-LDL was prepared by a modification of the method described by Schmidt et al. (20). Freshly isolated LDL (1.5 mg/ml) was sterilized by passage through a 0.2-µm-pore filter, added to 150 mM glucose-6-phosphate in 200 mM phosphate buffer, pH 8.0, containing 40 µM butylated hydroxytoluene and 400 µM EDTA, filter sterilized a second time, and incubated for 8 weeks at 37°C. At the end of the incubation, LDL was dialyzed for 24 h against three changes of 4 liters of 0.15 M NaCl-0.3 mM EDTA, pH 8.0. Our AGE-LDL modifications contained 4.6 mmol of CML per mol of lysine (0.5% modification of lysine residues) and 0.45 mmol of CEL per mol of lysine, corresponding to 0.05% modification of lysine residues). The MDA content of AGE-LDL was usually below the detection limit, but in some preparations MDA was detectable in small amounts, similar to those measured for CEL.
MDA modification of proteins was performed according to Haberland et al. (4) by incubating equal volumes of freshly isolated LDL and 0.2 M MDA for 3 h at 37°C, followed by extensive dialysis against 0.15 M NaCl with 0.3 mM EDTA, pH 8.0. The degree of modification of the MDA-LDL preparations used to immunize rabbits was 67 mmol of MDA per mol of lysine, corresponding to the modification of 6.7% of lysine residues.
CML-modified proteins were prepared by incubation of the protein with glyoxylic acid and NaBH3CN in phosphate buffer at 37°C, as described previously for the preparation of CML in bovine serum albumin (17). The degree of modification of the CML-LDL used in our studies was113 mmol of CML per mol of lysine (11.3% modification of lysine residues).
The characteristics of the different modified lipoproteins used in this study are summarized in Table 1.
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TABLE 1. Characteristics of the different types of modified LDL used in this study
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Analysis of LDL modifications. Analysis of modified lipoproteins for their content of CML, CEL, and the advanced lipoxidation end products MDA-lysine and HNE-lysine was carried out by selected ion monitoring-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (SIM-GC/MS) as described by Requena et al. (18). The degree of modification of MDA-LDL was also estimated by the thiobarbituric acid reactive substances assay (13), using MDA as a standard.
Rabbit antibodies. Antibodies to modified LDL were obtained by immunization of New Zealand White female rabbits with different modifications of human LDL (AGE-LDL, CML-LDL, oxLDL, and MDA-LDL) as previously described (29). The resulting rabbit antiserum was first fractionated by affinity chromatography with immobilized protein G, and the IgG fractions were absorbed in a column of immobilized native LDL. Depending on the protocol, the washout from the column of immobilized native LDL, containing antibodies to modified LDL and irrelevant IgG, was used as purified to capture modified LDL or as a peroxidase conjugate, prepared in our laboratory with the reagents and protocol obtained from Roche Diagnostics, Manheim, Germany, to detect captured LDL. The eluate, containing purified IgG antibodies to native LDL, predominantly reactive with ApoB, was used either to capture LDL or as a peroxidase conjugate to detect captured LDL.
Capture assays. Capture assays were carried out in two basic protocols. To capture MDA-LDL, oxLDL, and AGE-LDL, purified rabbit antibodies of the different specificities were absorbed to the plates at a protein concentration of approximately 35 µg/ml, chosen as optimal based on the signal/noise ratio, from three different concentrations (87.5, 35, and 17.5 µg/ml). After washing off the unabsorbed antibodies, the plates were blocked with 5% bovine serum albumin. Serial dilutions of modified LDL preparations were added to the plates, and rabbit peroxidase-conjugated anti-human ApoB, at a concentration of 0.67 µg/ml (chosen as optimal between two concentrations, 0.22 and 0.67 µg/ml), was used to detect bound LDL. To capture CML-LDL, we immobilized purified rabbit anti-human ApoB at a protein concentration of 22 µg/ml to capture LDL from the patient's samples and used rabbit peroxidase-conjugated anti-CML-LDL at a concentration of 0.5 µg/ml to detect bound CML-LDL. The capture assays for MDA-LDL and CML-LDL were calibrated with reference preparations of oxLDL and CML-LDL with known concentrations of MDA and CML, determined by SIM-GC/MS. The capture assay for oxLDL was calibrated in micrograms per milliliter, taking advantage of the fact that we have determined a reproducible method for the preparation of oxLDL with a consistent degree of modification (10). The assay of AGE-LDL could not be calibrated by any of the methods described above because AGE-LDL antibodies do not react with CML-LDL and because the degree of modification of different AGE-LDL preparations is variable. Therefore, we calibrated the assay in arbitrary units, defined as the reciprocal of the dilution of the reference AGE-LDL preparation that results in an optical density (OD) lower than 0.5 with a standard time for the reaction of the conjugate antibody with its substrate. In all assays, the concentration of LDL added to the antibody-containing wells was kept constant (5 µg/ml) and the final values were expressed as millimoles of MDA or CML per mole of lysine, micrograms of oxLDL per microgram of protein, or units of AGE-LDL per microgram of protein.
Technical validation and recovery studies. Intra-assay reproducibility was determined from six replicates of one in vitro-modified LDL preparation and from six replicates of an unknown LDL isolated from a PEG precipitate, both adjusted at a protein concentration of 5 µg/ml. Interassay reproducibility was determined by assaying the same samples in sextuplicate in six different plates.
Recovery experiments were performed by mixing equal volumes of native and modified LDL at 5 µg/ml and determining the total amounts measured by the capture assay by the calibration methods described above.
PEG precipitation of IC and isolation of free and IC-bound ApoB-rich lipoproteins. Fractionation of human sera with 4% PEG was performed as previously described (30). ApoB/E-containing lipoproteins (native and modified) were isolated from the supernatant and from the resuspended PEG precipitates. The supernatants were fractionated directly on heparin-agarose columns (Sigma-Aldrich Corp., St. Louis, Mo.) that retain ApoB/E-containing lipoproteins (2). The PEG precipitates were first submitted to affinity chromatography on protein G-Sepharose and the washout, containing all precipitated proteins other than IgG, was later fractionated on heparin-agarose columns. The lipoprotein-containing samples were pooled and dialyzed against saline containing 0.3 mM EDTA, pH 8.0, and tested by SIM-GC/MS and by the capture assays.
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FIG. 1. Diagrammatic representation of the results of specificity testing for the capture assays for MDA-LDL (A) and oxLDL (B). n-LDL, native LDL.
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FIG. 2. Diagrammatic representation of the results of specificity testing for the capture assay for CML-LDL. Panel A illustrates the preferential capture of CM-LDL at low protein concentrations. Panel B illustrates the preferential capture of AGE-LDL relatively to oxLDL and native LDL (nLDL) at high protein concentrations.
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FIG. 3. Diagrammatic representation of the results of specificity testing for the capture assay for AGE-LDL. nLDL, native LDL.
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TABLE 2. Sensitivity, reproducibility, and recovery data for the capture assays of MDA-LDL, oxLDL, CML-LDL, and AGE-LDL
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TABLE 3. Comparison of capture values obtained with equal concentrations of ApoB/E-rich lipoproteins purified from PEG-precipitated IC and the corresponding supernatants from sera collected from 12 patients with type 1 diabetes
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FIG. 4. Linear regression analysis of the correlation between assays for MDA-LDL in LDL isolated from PEG precipitates by the capture assay and by chemical analysis by GC/MS. lys, lysine.
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The specificity of our rabbit MDA-LDL antibodies could be verified by comparison with the results of GC/MS assays of MDA in ApoB-rich lipoproteins obtained from PEG precipitates. A significant correlation existed between the two assays. Similar validations were not possible for the other assays. In the case of CML-LDL, the chemical assay of CML appeared less sensitive than the capture assay and we did not obtain sufficient data to compare the two assays. In the cases of the oxLDL and AGE-LDL capture assays, the unknown nature of the epitopes recognized by the rabbit antibodies makes any such comparative analysis impossible.
The four antibodies used in the assay recognize different epitopes of modified LDL. Although human antibodies to oxLDL react primarily with MDA epitopes, rabbit antibodies to oxLDL recognize a different epitope, also present in spontaneously modified human LDL (29). Similarly, human antibodies to AGE-LDL react primarily with CML-LDL (30), but rabbit antibodies to AGE-LDL recognize epitope(s) unrelated to CML, which have been previously described by Ikeda et al. (6). Our data suggest that these epitopes are expressed, at lower levels, by oxLDL. As such, our rabbit AGE-LDL antibody does not differentiate well between oxLDL and AGE-LDL.
All our antibodies captured significantly higher levels of modified LDL in the ApoB/E-rich lipoproteins isolated from IC. The highest level of discrimination between LDL isolated from IC (apparently more modified) and LDL that remains soluble after IC precipitation was obtained with the antibodies to oxLDL and CML-LDL. The results obtained with MDA-LDL and oxLDL antibodies suggest that the majority of oxLDL molecules in circulation are part of circulating IC. Although we have previously proven that IC are precipitated with PEG and native LDL is not (1, 12, 30), we cannot state that all modified LDL is precipitated because of its involvement in IC formation. Other possible causes for precipitation in the presence of low concentrations of PEG, such as aggregation, cannot be easily ruled out, although the presence of LDL aggregates in circulation has never been proven. On the other hand, there was a significant difference in the data obtained with CML-LDL and AGE-LDL antibodies, because while the AGE-LDL antibodies did not react with free LDL, CML-LDL antibodies did. Therefore, CML-LDL seems to exist in circulation in both IC-bound and free forms.
The formation of circulating IC containing modified LDL and the corresponding antibodies has significant implications for the assay of modified LDL in whole serum. During the development of the capture assays, we observed that, when we tried to perform them with whole serum samples, the OD versus dilution curves were rather complex and the ranking of different samples by their apparent contents of modified LDL changed at different dilutions. This could be a consequence of the interaction of modified lipoproteins with autoantibodies of different affinities, leading to complex dissociation curves that interfere with their capture. The interference of IC in the modified LDL assays has been recognized by Ehara et al. (3), who used isolated LDL in their capture assay. However, it is highly unlikely that sequential ultracentrifugation will result in dissociation of IC, and the IC themselves are likely to sediment at a different rate from native LDL. The addition of 4% PEG to the samples (26) is likely to enhance IC formation, as this is the concentration that we use to precipitate IC from serum samples. Addition of sodium dodecyl sulfate to the samples (32) may help dissociate IC but may also negatively affect the antigen-antibody reaction. Our protocol, involving the isolation of antibody-free LDL from serum fractions, can certainly avoid the interference of IC in the assay but has as its main drawback the addition of several preparative steps that significantly complicate the screening of large numbers of samples. Future work will focus on two areas: the clinical significance of the detection of different types of modified LDL in PEG precipitates and the simplification of our assay protocol to allow clinical studies in large groups of patients.
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