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A. Al-Sharea et al.
tinual infusions of noradrenaline to allow for circadian fluctuations in blood pressure and heart rate, and to pre- vent the ongoing immune complications of surgery asso- ciated with the use of mini-pumps. Firstly, examining tra- ditional cardiovascular risk factors revealed no change in body weight or cholesterol between the two groups and while blood pressure increased over the feeding period in
both strains, the BPH/Apoe-/- mice maintained significantly higher blood pressure as measured by tail cuff and radio telemetry (Figure 1, A-C and Online Supplementary Figure S1). The mice were also equally active (Online Supplementary Figure S1). To explore the effect of chronic sympathetic activation associated with hypertension on atherosclerosis, we assessed the atherosclerotic burden in
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Figure 1. Hypertensive Apoe-/- mice have characteristics of unstable atherosclerotic lesions. Apoe-/- and BPH/Apoe-/- mice were fed a WTD for 16 weeks A) Weekly body mass progres- sion. B) Total plasma cholesterol was measured at the end of feeding. C) Systolic blood pres- sure of mice was measured before and at the end of WTD feeding. D) H&E staining for plaque size in the proximal aorta and E) ORO+ lesions in the aortic arch were quantified. Proximal aortas were also stained for F) lipid content (ORO), G) macrophages (CD68) and H) collagen (picosirius red). Lesions were imaged at X4 (insets) and zoomed in to view single lesions, scale bar = 100 mm. Data are presented as mean ± SEM where *P<0.05 and **P<0.01 (Student’s t-test) ****P<0.0001 (Two-way ANOVA). A,B,C) n= 5-10, D,E,F) n= 8, G) n=9, H) n=7-8.
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haematologica | 2019; 104(3)
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