Persistent Postirradiation Skeletal Muscle Protein and Insulin Sensitivity Changes in Nonhuman Primates

Increased incidence of diabetes has been reported after whole-body irradiation in cancer survivors and in the years after exposure in research studies of nonhuman primates. Type 2 diabetes presents in the absence of obesity and suggests that skeletal muscle, the predominant organ responsible for minute-to-minute glucose disposal, is persistently dysfunctional. We evaluated skeletal muscle (SkM) from control (CTL, n = 8) and irradiated (IRRAD, n = 16) male rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) that had been exposed to an average whole-body dose of 6.5 Gy after an average of 4 years of follow-up. Irradiated animals had deficient SkM basal and insulin-stimulated receptor activation that was unrelated to histologically assessed fiber size, extracellular matrix and endothelial components. Protein extracted from irradiated muscle showed that Akt2, downstream of insulin receptor activation, was sulfenyl-modified and thus a target for radiation-related glycemic dysregulation. Shotgun proteomics identified upregulation of many mitochondrial and peroxisome-associated proteins, and increases were confirmed by immunoblotting of select protein targets. Proteomic pathway enrichment mapping showed distinct protein clustering between CTL and IRRAD groups. Mitochondrial proteins were surveyed and confirm that mitochondrial turnover may be increased after irradiation with higher fission and fusion markers. The results indicate that irradiated muscle is persistently insulin resistant, with evidence of intracellular protein oxidation and shifts in mitochondrial dynamics and function.