Estrogen receptor expression in chronic hepatitis C and hepatocellular carcinoma pathogenesis

Figure 3 Expression of estrogen receptor subtypes in nuclear and cytoplasmic tissue lysates from normal and diseased subjects. A: Lysates prepared from nuclear and cytoplasmic fractions of liver tissues from normal, HCV and HCC subjects were subjected to Western blotting and probed with antibodies against ERα, ERβ, β-actin, histone (nuclear lysates only) and GAPDH (cytoplasmic lysates only). Representative blots for each group are depicted. B-G: The bands corresponding to ERα, ERβ and β-actin were quantified by densitometric analyses using ImageJ. Expression of the ERα and ERβ was normalized to the expression of β-actin and plotted with (B and C). The ERα:ERβ expression ratio was also plotted for normal, HCV and HCC group (D). Expression of ER subtypes and ERα:ERβ expression ratio in the male population of normal, HCV and HCC groups was plotted separately (E-G). ^aP < 0.05 or ^bP < 0.001 was considered significant. HCV: Hepatitis C virus; HCC: Hepatocellular carcinoma; ER: Estrogen receptor.