Expression data from total knee arthroplasty patients

Ischaemic preconditioning is a method of protecting tissue against ischaemia-reperfusion injury. It is an innate protective mechanism that increases a tissue's tolerance to prolonged ischaemia when it is first subjected to short burst of ischaemia and reperfusion. It is thought to provide this protection by increasing the tissue's tolerance to ischaemia, therby reducing oxidative stress, inflammation and apoptosis in the preconditioned tissue. We used microarrays to investigate the genomic response induced by ischaemic preconditioning in muscle biopsies taken from the operative leg of total knee arthroplasty patients in order to gain insight into the ischaemic preconditioning mechanism. Patients undergoing primary knee arthroplasty were randomised to control and treatment (ischaemic preconditioning) groups. Patients in the treatment group received a preconditioning stimulus immediately prior to surgery. The ischaemic preconditioning stimulus consisted of three five-minute periods of tourniquet insufflation on the lower operative limb, interrupted by five minute periods of reperfusion. All patients had a tourniquet applied to the lower limb after the administration of spinal anaesthesia, as per normal protocol for knee arthroplasty surgery. Muscle biopsies were taken from the quadriceps muscle of the operative knee at the immediate onset of surgery (T0) and at 1 hour into surgery (T1). Total RNA was extracted from biospies of four control and four treatment patients and hybridised to the Affymetrix Human U133 2.0 chip.