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In vitro proliferation of aortic smooth muscle cells from spontaneously hypertensive and normotensive rats
Author(s) -
Pang Stephen C.
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
the journal of pathology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.964
H-Index - 184
eISSN - 1096-9896
pISSN - 0022-3417
DOI - 10.1002/path.1711580212
Subject(s) - smooth muscle , in vitro , medicine , spontaneously hypertensive rat , endocrinology , chemistry , cardiology , blood pressure , biochemistry
The characteristics and proliferation of aortic smooth muscle cells (SMC) from spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and normotensive Wistar‐Kyoto (WKY) rats were studied in culture. Smooth muscle cells were isolated from the tunica media of the thoracic aorta by an explant method. Immunefluorescence microscopy showed that 93–95 per cent of cells were positively labelled with antibodies raised against smooth muscle actin, indicating that these were smooth muscle cells. The proliferate activity was compared between aortic smooth muscle cells from hypertensive and normotensive rats in culture by thymidine incorporation and eell number determinations. The results demonstrate that aortic smooth muscle cells from hypertensive rats grew faster than those from normotensive rats in culture. The increased proliferative activity of cultured aortic smooth muscle cells from hypertensive rats was detectable even when they were cultured in a chemically defined serum‐free medium. These data have shown that an increased proliferative activity of aortic smooth muscle cells from hypertensive rats can occur in culture conditions without the influence of arterial pressure or other stimuli as in intact animals. The mechanisms underlying the accelerated proliferative activity of aortic smooth muscle cells from genetically hypertensive rats in vitro remain to be determined.