ENDOTHELIAL CHANGES INDUCED BY ARTERIAL SPASM

  • 1 January 1981
    • journal article
    • research article
    • Vol. 102  (3) , 346-358
Abstract
Prolonged arterial constriction can cause damage to the artery itself. These intimal changes were defined. Two muscular arteries of the rat were studied by EM 15 min-7 days after L-norepinephrine was dripped over the vessels. Endothelial damage was caused by the tight folding of the internal elastic lamina, which mechanically squeezed the cells. As the artery relaxed, the endothelium showed gaps, patches of thinned cytoplasm and many adhesions between cells on opposite sides of intimal folds. The adhesions involved whole cells or cytoplasmic bridges stretched across the intimal valleys. They were present up to 1 day; later they seemed to snap and disappear without causing further cellular damage. A survey of the literature shows that such adhesions can develop in collapsed arteries post-mortem. They explain the endothelial bridges previously described by others as a normal intimal structure.