Dataset for: Impact of external pneumatic compression target inflation pressure on transcriptome-wide RNA expression in skeletal muscle

Next generation RNA sequencing was employed to determine the acute and sub-chronic impact of peristaltic pulse external pneumatic compression (PEPC) of different target inflation pressures on global gene expression in human vastus lateralis skeletal muscle biopsy samples. Methods: Eighteen (N=18) male participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups: 1) sham (n=6), 2) EPC at 30-40 mmHg (LP-EPC; n=6) and 3) EPC at 70-80 mmHg (MP-EPC; n=6). 1-h treatment with sham/EPC occurred for 7 consecutive days. Vastus lateralis skeletal muscle biopsies were performed at baseline (before first treatment; PRE), 1-h following the first treatment (POST1), and 24-h following the last (7th) treatment (POST2). Changes from PRE in gene expression were analyzed via paired comparisons within each group. Genes were filtered to include only those that had an RPKM > 1.0, a fold-change of > 1.5 and a paired t-test value of <0.01. Results: For the sham condition, 2 genes at POST1 and 1 gene at POST2 were significantly altered. For the LP-EPC condition, 9 genes were upregulated and 0 genes were downregulated at POST1 while 39 genes were upregulated and 1 gene downregulated at POST2. For the MP-EPC condition, 2 genes were significantly upregulated and 21 genes were downregulated at POST1 and 0 genes were altered at POST2. Conclusions: Both LP-EPC and MP-EPC acutely alter skeletal muscle gene expression though only LP-EPC appeared to affect gene expression with sub-chronic application. Moreover, the transcriptome response to EPC demonstrated marked heterogeneity (i.e., genes and directionality) with different target inflation pressures.