http://www.ibtimes.com/basic-medical-beliefs-about-heart-atherosclerosis-wrong-study-1997482
A new study has overturned fundamentally held
assumptions about atherosclerotic plaques that can cause deadly heart
attacks and strokes, changing medical science’s understanding of why and
how arteries harden.
The standing belief in the medical community has
been that smooth muscle cells, which help blood vessels contract and
dilate, were thought to “wall off” sections of plaque as a defense
mechanism against its buildup. However, researchers from the University
of Virginia School of Medicine found that a majority of these cells
were, in fact, contributing to the buildup of the plaque, instead of
fighting it. The results of their study were published Monday in the journal Nature.
"We suspected there was a small number of smooth
muscle cells we were failing to identify using the typical
immunostaining detection methods. It wasn't a small number. It was
eighty-two percent," Gary K. Owens, of the University of Virginia Robert
M. Berne Cardiovascular Research Center, said in a press release.
“Eighty-two percent of the smooth muscle cells within advanced
atherosclerotic lesions cannot be identified using the typical
methodology since the lesion cells down-regulate smooth muscle cell
markers. As such, we have grossly underestimated how many smooth muscle
cells are in the lesion."
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