Purpose  To compare the expression of intrinsic proteins expressed in the epithelium of lens capsule between normal and pseudoexfoliation patients.
Methods  Lens capsules (LC) were obtained from normal and pseudoexfoliation (PXF) eyes during cataract extraction surgery through avascular cornea and without contamination by hemorrhage. Immunofluorescence (IF) of different proteins including histone H3, beta-crystallin, calpain 2 and keratin were used on folmaxin-fixed lens capsule sections. The staining signals were calculated by Image J and compared by SPSS 15.0 software. Western blotting of solubilized LC (pooled by minimum 7 specimens) was used to compare these proteins’ expression levels between normal and PXF eyes.
Results  All these four intrinsic proteins were higher expressed in PXF eyes than in normal eyes based on that the internal control of DAPI staining had no difference. The mean signal values of histone H3, beta-crystallin, calpain 2 and keratin in PXF eyes were 11.76±6.15, 22.14±6.95, 22.36±12.52 and 14.47±7.09 while those in normal eyes were 6.66±3.37, 12.15±4.48, 9.60±9.18 and 8.49±1.86 separately. The differences of each protein between two groups were all significant (P value < 0.05). The Western blotting results showed that the bands in PXF groups were bolder than those in normal groups.
Conclustions  PXF is associated with changes in cell intrinsic protein expression of lens capsule epithelium. Many of these differentially expressed proteins (such as histones) are expressed in most cell types and are not eye-specific. It suggests that PXF is a systemic multi-factorial disease process that is also associated with the local presence of intraocular PXF material that causes glaucoma.