objective: asafoetida (ferula assa-foetida) is known as a valuable remedy for whooping cough, pneumonia, bronchitis in children and asthma treatment in folk medicine. in the present study the relaxant effects of the asafoetida on tracheal smooth muscle of guinea pigs and its probable mechanism(s) were examined. materials and methods: the relaxant effects of three cumulative concentrations of th...

In recent years, circulating progenitors of endothelial cells and smooth muscle cells were identified in the peripheral blood. In our study, we evaluated the utilization of both cell types isolated and differentiated from peripheral porcine blood in terms for their use for tissue engineering purposes. By means of density gradient centrifugation, the monocyte fraction from porcine blood was sepa...

It is well known that vascular smooth muscle tone can be modulated by signals arising in the endothelium (e.g., endothelium-derived relaxing factor, endothelium-derived hyperpolarizing factor, and prostaglandins). Here we show that during vasoconstriction a signal can originate in smooth muscle cells and act on the endothelium to cause synthesis of endothelium-derived relaxing factor. We studie...

It is well established that during in vivo development the neurons of the avian ciliary ganglion are dependent for their survival on structures in the eye. Separate neuron populations innervate intraocular smooth and striated muscle targets. All ciliary neurons survive when cocultured with striated muscle. We demonstrate that when ciliary ganglion neurons are plated on explants of the choroid c...

Smooth muscle cell migration and proliferation contribute to neointimal hyperplasia and vascular stenosis after endothelial denudation. Previous studies revealed that apolipoprotein E (apoE) is an effective inhibitor of platelet-derived growth factor-directed smooth muscle cell migration and proliferation and that the anti-migratory function is mediated via apoE binding to low density lipoprote...

RATIONALE Smooth muscle precursor cells have previously been reported to reside in bone marrow and in the circulation, but little is currently known regarding the proximate stimuli for smooth muscle cell differentiation of these putative progenitors. OBJECTIVE Because local thrombin generation occurs as an initial response to vascular injury, we hypothesized that thrombin may influence the di...

OBJECTIVES The A10 cell line was derived from the thoracic aorta of embryonic rat and is a commonly used model of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMC). Despite its wide use this cell line has not been well characterized. This is especially important in light of recent evidence of phenotypically distinct cell populations isolated from rat vascular tissue. Therefore, the present study was undertak...

BACKGROUND Chronic airway obstruction is characteristic of cystic fibrosis (CF) but there are few studies of airway smooth muscle remodelling in CF. METHODS Airway smooth muscle content and mean airway smooth muscle cell size were measured by applying design-based stereology to bronchoscopic biopsy specimens obtained from seven subjects with CF and 15 healthy controls. RESULTS The smooth mu...

We have analyzed by immunolabeling the fate of exogenous epitope-tagged actin isoforms introduced into cultured smooth muscle and non-muscle (i.e. endothelial and epithelial) cells by transfecting the corresponding cDNAs in transient expression assays. Exogenous muscle actins did not produce obvious shape changes in transfected cells. In smooth muscle cells, transfected striated and smooth musc...

Migration of smooth muscle cells from the arterial media to the intima is central to several vascular pathologies including restenosis. This study demonstrates that, like directional migration of other cells, smooth muscle migration is accompanied by a dramatic, polarized reorganization of the cell cytoskeleton that is accompanied by activation of the Rho GTPase Cdc42 and inactivation of glycog...