Figure 4

Gene expression signatures demonstrate lack of relationship between weight loss and muscle damage, muscle sepsis and exercise training status. The top 20 most regulated genes by (a) eccentric muscle damage, (b) muscle obtained from intensive care unit patients and (c) in response to exercise training were obtained from three published articles (see Methods). The mean values for these selected genes were then plotted for patients in the present study that had either less than or more than 5% weight loss. As can be observed, no single gene, for each of these 'comparative' conditions, was differentially expressed; thus, the gene expression profile of cancer cachexia does not resemble muscle damage, sepsis-induced degeneration or exercise training status. Error bars represent SEM.