In this article the tautomerization reaction of the enol form of malonaldehyde is used to investigate the magnitude and origin of changes in centroid transition state theory proton transfer reaction rate predictions caused by the quantum dispersion of heavy nuclei. Using an empirical valence bond method to construct the potential energy surface, it is found that quantization of the nuclear degrees of freedom of the carbon atoms significantly influences the centroid potential of mean force used to describe the proton transfer reaction. In contrast, an ab initio simulation carried out using a recently developed molecular mechanics based importance sampling method [J. Chem. Phys. 114, 6763 (2001)] in combination with an accurate density functional theory evaluation of the electronic energies shows a substantially smaller influence of the quantum nuclear degrees of freedom of the secondary atoms on the centroid potential of mean force. A detailed analysis of the different influence of quantization of the nuclear degrees of freedom of secondary atoms observed in the ab initio and empirical valence bond centroid potential of mean force was carried out. It is shown that for the empirical valence bond potential, a significant decrease of the centroid potential of mean force arises through the quantum tunneling of carbon atoms in the molecular backbone. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that in molecular mechanics potentials aimed to describe intramolecular proton transfer reactions, the functional form of the potential energy terms coupling the primary and secondary atom motions as the reaction proceeds as well as the mass of the primary particle can significantly influence the centroid transition state theory predictions of secondary kinetic isotope effects. Finally, the dependence of the reaction rate predictions and isotope effects on the choice of reaction coordinate is investigated and the validity of calculating kinetic isotope effects using the centroid transition state theory formalism is discussed.