Figure 2.

BLVRB Is Enriched in Plaques and Plasma From Carotid Atherosclerosis Patients

BLVRB messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) was highly up-regulated in comparison between plaques and normal arteries, both in the discovery (n = 127 cp + 10 na) and validation microarray dataset (n = 50 cp + 5 na) (A), and these results were confirmed by qPCR from 2 sets of plaques compared with normal arteries (B). Plots show log₂ mean ± SD for microarrays and mean fold change for qPCR. By proteomic analysis of plaques compared with matched adjacent arterial tissue (n = 18), BLVRB was also strongly up-regulated (C). Immunohistochemistry confirms the lack of signal for BLVRB in normal artery, but strong widespread staining in carotid plaque (red signal, negative control [ctrl] subjects shown in insets) (D). BLVRB was detected with 2 antibodies in the bead array–based plasma screening as strongly up-regulated in local versus peripheral plasma (E). This enrichment was confirmed by sandwich immunoassay (SIA) in the same samples as well as in another set of 66 patients (F). Plots show median of fluorescence intensity (MFI) with mean ± SD. Bonferroni corrected p values shown in A and C, nominal values in E (Bonferroni cutoff in plasma screening p = 4.8 × 10⁻⁶). AU = arbitrary unit(s); TMT = technology, media, telecommunications; other abbreviations as in Figure 1.