Background

The trapezius muscle is a neck muscle that is susceptible to chronic pain conditions associated with repetitive tasks, commonly referred to as chronic work-related myalgia, hence making the trapezius a muscle of clinical interest. To provide a basis for further investigations of the proteomic traits of the trapezius muscle in disease, two-dimensional difference gel electrophoresis (2D-DIGE) was performed on the healthy trapezius using vastus lateralis as a reference. To obtain as much information as possible from the vast proteomic data set, both one-way ANOVA, with and without false discovery rate (FDR) correlation, and partial least square projection to latent structures with discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) were combined to compare the outcome of the analysis.

Results

The trapezius and vastus lateralis showed significant differences in metabolic, contractile and regulatory proteins, with different results depending on choice of statistical approach and pre-processing technique. Using the standard method, FDR correlated one-way ANOVA, 42 protein spots differed significantly in abundance between the two muscles. Complementary analysis using immunohistochemistry and western blot confirmed the results from the 2D-DIGE analysis.

Conclusions

The proteomic approach used in the present study combining 2D-DIGE and multivariate modelling provided a more comprehensive comparison of the protein profiles of the human trapezius and vastus lateralis muscle, than previously possible to obtain with immunohistochemistry or SDS-PAGE alone. Although 2D-DIGE has inherent limitations it is particularly useful to comprehensively screen for important structural and metabolic proteins, and appears to be a promising tool for future studies of patients suffering from chronic work related myalgia or other muscle diseases.