Expression of dystrophin-glycoprotein complex at the skeletal muscle sarcolemma in Duchenne muscular dystrophy

Abstract

Background  Eccentric exercise or high tension exercise could cause damage to skeletal muscle structure, resulting in deficiency of dystrophin and secondary loss of dystrophin-glycoprotein complex (DGC) from the sarcolemma, which indicated that down-regulation of dystrophin was one of the key points of skeletal muscle injury from eccentric exercise. Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is caused by mutations of DMD gene, resulting in the absence of dystrophin, which means that skeletal muscles of DMD patients after birth are in the natural state of actual path of force transmission which carried high tension from eccentric exercise. This paper investigated systematically whether expression of DGC is associated with progressive muscle weakness in natural history of DMD, and analyzed the expression of DGC at the sarcolemma of 197 confirmed DMD cases (9 days-12 years old).  Methods  The expression of α- and β-dystroglycan (DG), α-, β-, γ- and δ-sarcoglycan (SG) and syntrophin at the sarcolemma of DMD patients was analyzed by immunofluorescent staining.  Results  The study showed that there was no relationship between lack of proteins and progressive muscle weakness with increasing age, although expression of α- and β-DG, α-, β-, γ- and δ-SG and syntrophin at the sarcolemma at different stages of 197 DMD patients (9 days-12 years old) had different degrees of deficiency.  Conclusions  Deficiency of DGC may occur before birth and DMD patients were recommended to avoid further damage to skeletal muscles from eccentric exercise and high-resistance movement in activities of daily life and rehabilitation training.

DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.1672-6731.2015.06.006