The Features of Smooth Muscle Cells of the Thoracic Aorta of SHR Rats in the Early Stages of Arterial Hypertension
摘要
The contractile, proliferative, and migratory activity of thoracic aortic smooth muscle cells in SHR rats at ages of 1, 2, and 3 weeks from birth was studied. To assess the proliferative activity of cells, real–time PCR was used by comparing the relative amount of genomic DNA between the control and experiment; to determine the migration activity of smooth muscle cells, a wound healing assay was used; to assess the level of contractile activity of cells, a method for assessing the degree of compression of a collagen gel was employed. An increase in proliferative (by ~20%, p ≤ 0.01) and a decrease in migration (by ~47%, p ≤ 0.01) and contractile (by ~43%, p ≤ 0.01) activities of smooth muscle cells of the aorta of 1-week-old rats relative to those of cells of normotensive animals was found. In 2-week-old rats, the proliferative and migratory activity of aortic smooth muscle cells did not differ from those in normotensive rats, while the contractile activity of cells in rats of this age group was reduced by ~69%, ≤0.01). In the smooth muscle cells of the aorta of 3-week-old rats, there was a decrease in proliferative (by ~54%, p ≤ 0.01) and migratory (by ~47%, p ≤ 0.01) activities. Thus, the detected changes in the studied activities of thoracic aortic smooth muscle cells in SHR rats compared with those in normotensive rats are already observed in 1-week-old animals in the early neonatal period of development.