Estrogen deficiency induces pelvic floor muscle atrophy via ERα/GLUT4 pathway
Fig 4
Identification and validation of GLUT4 as a key estrogen target in skeletal muscle metabolism.
(A) KEGG pathway enrichment analysis of DEGs in skeletal muscle transcriptomes from pre- versus post-menopausal women. (B) GSEA of KEGG pathways. Red and blue indicate overall up- or down-regulation in post-menopausal samples, respectively. NES, normalized enrichment score. (C) Correlation heatmap between estrogen receptor genes and glucose metabolism-related genes. Color and number in each cell represent the Pearson correlation coefficient. (D) Expression of Slc2a4 in the uterus of immature mice treated with estrogen. (E) Effect of estrogen on SLC2A4 expression in ER-negative breast cancer cells. (F, G) Immunohistochemical staining of GLUT4 in the PFM of Sham and OVX rats. (H) qRT-PCR results of Slc2a4 during C2C12 differentiation. (I, J) Glucose uptake assay in C2C12 cells on Day 3 of differentiation. Data are presented as mean ± SD. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ns, no significance.