Fig. 4

Altered sex-specific proteins show significant differences in matched lesion regions between men and women. Carotid endarterectomy lesions (n = 20, equal sex ratio) were sampled isolated specified regions: internal control, fatty streak and plaque centre. a Heat map depicting the relative expression of each protein in each lesion region. Colour scale represents a relative shift in protein expression across all lesion regions, men and women, per protein. The lesion region with the highest expression is highlighted in red, through white, and then blue indicating the lesion region with the lowest expression of a protein. Univariate statistical analysis was performed by non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test comparing matched lesion regions between men and women, where bars indicate p < 0.05. b Western blot analysis of altered protein abundances between lesion regions, showing increased abundances of afamin, antithrombin III and coagulation factor XII (Factor XII) in the lesion regions from women. Please note, these are only representations of protein differences in a single man and woman’s carotid endarterectomy samples, and lacks loading control because of technical restrictions and limited amounts of protein samples. Presented gel images are cropped from full-length blots that are presented in Additional file 1: Figure S3