Effect of Doxycycline on Survival in Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms in a Mouse Model

Background Currently, there is no reliable nonsurgical treatment for abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA). This study, therefore, investigates if doxycycline reduces AAA growth and the number of rupture-related deaths in a murine ApoE−/− model of AAA and whether gadofosveset trisodium-based MRI differs between animals with and without doxycycline treatment.Methods Nine ApoE−/− mice were implanted with osmotic minipumps continuously releasing angiotensin II and treated with doxycycline (30 mg/kg/d) in parallel. After four weeks, MRI was performed at 3T with a clinical dose of the albumin-binding probe gadofosveset (0.03 mmol/kg). Results were compared with previously published wild-type control animals and with previously studied ApoE−/− animals without doxycycline treatment. Differences in mortality were also investigated between these groups.Results In a previous study, we found that approximately 25% of angiotensin II-infused ApoE−/− mice died, whereas in the present study, only one out of 9 angiotensin II-infused and doxycycline-treated ApoE−/− mice (11.1%) died within 4 weeks. Furthermore, doxycycline-treated ApoE−/− mice showed significantly lower contrast-to-noise (CNR) values ( p =0.017) in MRI compared to ApoE−/− mice without doxycycline treatment. In vivo measurements of relative signal enhancement (CNR) correlated significantly with ex vivo measurements of albumin staining ( R 2  = 0.58). In addition, a strong visual colocalization of albumin-positive areas in the fluorescence albumin staining with gadolinium distribution in LA-ICP-MS was shown. However, no significant difference in aneurysm size was observed after doxycycline treatment.Conclusion The present experimental in vivo study suggests that doxycycline treatment may reduce rupture-related deaths in AAA by slowing endothelial damage without reversing aneurysm growth.