Common aberrations from the normal human plasma N-glycan profile.

After performing hydrophilic interaction and weak anion exchange high-performance liquid chromatography to analyze N-glycans in the plasma of 1991 people, we identified several individuals that differed significantly from the "normal" profile of N-glycans. By performing consensus scoring of pairwise distances between vectors containing measured glycan values, we formed six groups of individuals with specific glyco-phenotypes. Some aberrations from the normal plasma protein patterns were found to be associated with clinical conditions (such as renal problems in people with increased monosialylated biantennary glycans, A2G2S1), while other substantial changes in N-glycan structure, such as the near complete absence of neutral glycans or antennary fucosylated tri- and tetraantennary glycans, were not associated with any observed adverse health outcomes. These results demonstrate the existence of specific altered glyco-phenotypes in some individuals and indicate that in some cases they might represent risk factors for the development of specific diseases.