Vascular sympathetic neuroeffector associations have been examined in rat iris arterioles using serial section electron microscopy and reconstruction techniques. Examination of random sections showed that, of all profiles of varicosities (199) seen to lie closer than 4 microns to vascular smooth muscle cells, only a small proportion (29/199) were found in close association with vascular smooth ...

The Na(+)-H+ exchanger has important modulatory effects on vascular smooth muscle cell proliferation and contractility. Increased Na(+)-H+ exchange activity is a general property of many tissues, including mesenteric artery and cultured vascular smooth muscle cells, in the spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHR). In the present work, we investigated whether alterations in the steady-state levels o...

The effects of the ionophoric antibiotic X537A on cell structure were studied with phase-contrast, fluorescence, and electron microscopy. X537A induced selective vacuolation of the Golgi apparatus of vascular and intestinal smooth muscle, epithelium, plasma cells, and cultured chick heart and guinea pig vascular smooth muscle cells. The swelling of the Golgi apparatus induced by X537A was rever...

Numerous studies have shown that the proliferation and apoptosis of vascular smooth muscle cells play a key role in restenosis. Artesunate is a triterpenoid with a peroxide structure and its antimalarial, antitumor, and antiangiogenetic activities can inhibit the proliferation and apoptosis of multifarious cells. Apoptosis is caused by the activation of a series of intracellular proteolytic enz...

genes in specific cell types in vivo would help to determine their mechanism of action. We describe a method to transfer vascular smooth muscle cells expressing recombinant gene products to localized segments of the arterial wall. Vascular smooth muscle cells from the inbred Yucatan minipig were infected in vitro with an amphotropic, replication-defective retrovirus transducing the gene for Esc...

BACKGROUND Monckeberg's calcification in diabetes, known as medial artery calcification, is an independent predictor of cardiovascular mortality. However, the mechanism underlying this phenomenon remains to be elucidated. We demonstrate that advanced glycation end products (AGEs) induce calcification of vascular smooth muscle cells through the receptor for AGE (RAGE)/p38 mitogen-activated prote...

Objective(s): Vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) play a key role in the pathogenesis of diabetic vascular disease. Our current study sought to explore the effects of tanshinone IIA on the proliferation and migration of VSMCs induced by advanced glycation end products (AGEs). Materials and Methods: In this study, we examined the effects of tanshinone IIA by cell proliferation assay and cell mi...

Abnormal mechanical forces can trigger aberrant proliferation of endothelial and smooth muscle cells, as observed in the progression of vascular diseases such as atherosclerosis. It has been previously shown that cells can sense physical forces such as stretch through adhesions to the extracellular matrix. Here, we set out to examine whether cell-cell adhesions are also involved in transducing ...

Details of the interdependent, trophic relation between smooth muscle and its neural innervation are not well known despite suggestions that neural influences may contribute significantly to hypertensive and other cardiovascular disease. Vascular smooth muscle is a major target of innervation by neurons of the sympathetic nervous system. Sympathetic neurons depend on a constant supply of the po...