Human artery

Attempting to flow past thin sections to fill wider sections is difficult or may be impossible, because the flow thickens enroute acts like plaque forming along walls of a human artery. Even if both of these ills are avoided, the final result may still contain areas of high shear stresses invisible to the eye but waiting in ambush to cause failure later under extreme conditions previously thought to be well within the material s specifications. 

The innermost layer of an artery, which consists of loose connective tissue covered by a monolayer of endothelium that resides on a basement membrane. In human arteries, the intima often contains resident smooth muscle cells even early in life. Atherosclerotic plaques form in the intima. 

We have identified mast cells around blood vessels and between myocardial fibers in all sections of human hearts [16,17]. These cells are also seen in normal and atherosclerotic human arterial intima [ 18-21 ]. In situ electron microscopy of cardiac mast cells revealed a small percentage (about 5%) of activated, i.e. partially degranulated mast cells [16,22]. This is clinically relevant because it implies that immunologic and non-immunologic stimuli can activate HHMC to release vasoactive and proinflammatory mediators [23]. 

Heinecke, J.W., Rosen, H. and Chait, A. (1984). Iron and copper promote modification of low density lipoprotein by human arterial smooth muscle cells in culture. J. Clin. Invest. 74, 1890-1894. 

Rus HG, Vlaicu R, Niculescu F. Interleukin-6 and interleukin-8 protein and gene expression in human arterial atherosclerotic wall. Atherosclerosis 1996 127(2) 263-271. 

Fig. 4.7. Application of hyperspectral FLIM to an unstained fixed section of human artery excited at 400 nm (A) schematic of a line-scanning hyperspectral...

It has been already pointed out that nitric oxide exhibits antioxidant effect in LDL oxidation at the NO/ 02 ratio 1. Under these conditions the antioxidant effect of NO prevails on the prooxidant effect of peroxynitrite. Although some earlier studies suggested the possibility of NO-mediated LDL oxidation [152,153], these findings were not confirmed [154]. On the other hand, at lower values of N0/02 ratio the formed peroxynitrite becomes an efficient initiator of LDL modification. Beckman et al. [155] suggested that peroxynitrite rapidly reacts with tyrosine residues to form 3-nitrotyrosine. Later on, Leeuwenburgh et al. [156] found that 3-nitrotyrosine was formed in the reaction of peroxynitrite with LDL. The level of 3-nitrotyrosine sharply differed for healthy subjects and patients with cardiovascular diseases LDL isolated from the plasma of healthy subjects contained a very low level of 3-nitrotyrosine (9 + 7 pmol/mol 1 of tyrosine), while LDL isolated from aortic atherosclerotic intima had a 90-fold higher level (840 + 140 pmol/moD1 of tyrosine). It has been proposed that peroxynitrite formed in the human artery wall is able to promote LDL oxidation in vivo. 

Deposition of liquid crystalline material containing cholesterol esters on the inner surfaces of human arteries is another nonequilibrium process in which much interest exists. No doubt there are other examples as well where dynamic phenomena involving liquid crystals are important in biological systems. 

Aldini G, Carini M, Piccoli A, Rossoni G Facino RM. 2003. Procyanidins from grape seeds protect endothelial cells from peroxynitrite damage and enhance endothelium-dependent relaxation in human artery New evidences for cardio-protection. Life Sci 73 2883-2898. 

The metabolism of HDL probably involves interaction with both hepatic and peripheral cells, as well as with other lipoproteins. HDL may remove cholesterol from tissues, the "scavenger hypothesis (11,12). The cholesterol may then be esterifed by the action of lecithin cholesterol acyl transferase. HDL may provide cholesterol to the liver for bile acid synthesis (13) and some HDL may be catabolized by the liver in the process. HDL has not been found to interfere with the binding of LDL in cultured human fibroblasts (6). However, in cultured human arterial cells, porcine or rat hepatocytes, and rat adrenal gland, there appears to be some competition of HDL with LDL binding sites, suggesting the presence of a "lipoprotein-binding" site (14). 

A prolonged vector infusion can be performed since blood flows through a central core of the catheter. This system has been successfully used to achieve efficient gene delivery into the endothelium and superficial medial layers of both normal and atherosclerotic rabbit and human arteries (Laitinen et al.,... 

McCormick MM, Rahimi F, Bobryshev YV, Gaus K, Zreiqat H, Cai H, Lord RS, Geczy CL. 2005. S100A8 and S100A9 in human arterial wall. Implications for atherogenesis. J Biol Chem... 

Golovina, V. A., 1999, Cell proliferation is associated with enhanced capacitative Ca(2+) entry in human arterial myocytes. Am J Physiol 277, C343-9. 

Carmody BJ, et al. Folic acid inhibits homocysteine-induced proliferation of human arterial smooth muscle cells. J Vase Surg 1999 30(6) I 121-1 128. 

Blagosklonny MV Darzynkiewicz Z, Halicka HD, et al. Paclitaxel induces primary and postmitotic GI arrest in human arterial smooth muscle cells. Cell Cycle 2004 3(8) 1050-1056. 

Leon MB, Lu DY, Prevosti LG, et al. Human arterial surface fluorescence atherosclerotic plaque identification and effects of laser atheroma ablation. J Am Coll Cardiol 1988 12(I ) 94-102. 

Graves LM, Bomfeldt KE, Raines EW, Potts BC, Macdonald SG, Ross R, Krebs EG. 1993. Protein kinase A antagonizes platelet-derived growth factor-induced signaling by mitogen activated protein kinase in human arterial smooth muscle cells. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 90 10300-10304. 

Ko, Y., Glodny, B., Stier, S., et al. 1997. Angiotensin type-1 (ATI) receptor gene expression in primarily cultured human arterial umbilical endothelial cells. Biochem Pharmacol 53 417-421. 

In the preceding two examples, Raman spectra were obtained from tissues and cell samples ex vivo. Recently, Buschman et al. (46) were able to measure Raman spectra of sheep arterial walls in vivo using a miniature fiberoptic probe. They have demonstrated that the in vivo intravascular Raman signal obtained directly from a blood vessel is a simple summation of signals from the blood vessel wall and blood itself. This technique may be useful in predicting the risk of arterial plaque rapture and determining plaque composition in human arteries. 

One such approach has recently been developed and shown to enable high-resolution NSOM fluorescence and force measurements on viable cultured human arterial smooth muscle (HASM) cells under buffered conditions [28,29], This approach takes advantage of the nanofabrication capabilities of focused ion beam (FIB) milling to sculpt a light delivery structure into the end of a conventional AFM probe. The FIB technique, which utilizes a focused beam of gallium ions to mill samples with nanometer resolution, was first used by van Hulst and co-workers to modify conventional NSOM probes [30]. They demonstrated an improvement in single molecule fluorescence measurements using... 

Zhou, O., Kummerow, F.A. 1994. Alteration in Ca2+ uptake and lipid content in cultured human arterial smooth muscle cells treated with 26-hydroxycholesterol. Artery 21,182-192. 

Robbie LA, Young SP, Bennett B, Booth NA (1997) Thrombi formed in a Chandler loop mimic human arterial thrombi in structure and PAI-1 content in distribution. Thromb Haemost 77 510-515... 

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