Endothelial injury in vivo - a technical and statistical approach
to the study of aortic integrity.
Skantze, Harriet Bj[diaeresis]ork, G[diaeresis]oran Bondjers, Bertil
Olofsson, Knut Pettersson, Anders Svensson.
Wallenberg Laboratory (Harriet Bj[diaeresis]ork Skantze, BSc,
G[diaeresis]oran Bondjers, MD, PhD) Sahlgren's Hospital, S-413 45
Gothenburg, Sweden; Department of Medical Statistics (Bertil
Olofsson, PhD) and Cardiovascular Research Laboratories (Knut
Pettersson, PhD) AB Astra H[umlaut]assle, S-431 83
M[diaeresis]olndal, Sweden; Department of Pharmacology (Anders
Svensson, BSc) University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden.
APStracts 2:0534H, 1995.
The endothelium can be a link connecting risk factors with the
development of cardiovascular disease, and methods for studying
endothelial integrity are therefore important. We describe a method
of studying endothelial injury in vivo, by combining
immunohistochemistry with an improved technique of producing "en
face" preparations (H[umlaut]autchens) of aortic endothelium of
rabbits and guinea pigs. These H[umlaut]autchens enabled the study of
large number of endothelial cells and adherent cells (probably
leukocytes), at different locations along the aorta. The statistical
distributions of the number of injured endothelial cells and adherent
cells in a visual field were also investigated, and both closely
followed a log-normal distribution. Based on this distribution, a
method to estimate endothelial injury by grouping the cell count
data, instead of exact counting, was developed. The grouped cell
count data was then used to calculate the grouped mean and grouped
standard deviation for each animal. The improvements of the technical
and statistical methods offer good opportunities to study various
aspects of endothelial integrity in a time efficient manner.
Received 14 June 1995; accepted in final form 31 October 1995.
APS Manuscript Number H541-5.
Article publication pending Am. J. Physiol. (Heart Circ. Physiology).
ISSN 1080-4757 Copyright 1995 The American Physiological Society.
Published in APStracts on 8 December 95