Raman spectroscopy imaging reveals interplay between atherosclerosis and medial calcification in human aorta
File(s)e1701156.full.pdf (2.23 MB)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Medial calcification in the human aorta accumulates during aging and is known to be aggravated in several diseases. Atherosclerosis, another major cause of cardiovascular calcification, shares some common aggravators. However, the mechanisms of cardiovascular calcification remain poorly understood. To elucidate the relationship between medial aortic calcification and atherosclerosis, we characterized the cross-sectional distributions of the predominant minerals in aortic tissue, apatite and whitlockite, and the associated extracellular matrix. We also compared the cellular changes between atherosclerotic and nonatherosclerotic human aortic tissues. This was achieved through the development of Raman spectroscopy imaging methods that adapted algorithms to distinguish between the major biomolecules present within these tissues. We present a relationship between apatite, cholesterol, and triglyceride in atherosclerosis, with the relative amount of all molecules concurrently increased in the atherosclerotic plaque. Further, the increase in apatite was disproportionately large in relation to whitlockite in the aortic media directly underlying a plaque, indicating that apatite is more pathologically significant in atherosclerosis-aggravated medial calcification. We also discovered a reduction of β-carotene in the whole aortic intima, including a plaque in atherosclerotic aortic tissues compared to nonatherosclerotic tissues. This unprecedented biomolecular characterization of the aortic tissue furthers our understanding of pathological and physiological cardiovascular calcification events in humans.
Date Issued
2017-12-06
Date Acceptance
2017-11-09
Citation
Science Advances, 2017, 3 (12)
ISSN
2375-2548
Publisher
American Association for the Advancement of Science
Journal / Book Title
Science Advances
Volume
3
Issue
12
Copyright Statement
Copyright © 2017 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.
Sponsor
Wellcome Trust
Medical Research Council (MRC)
Medical Research Council (MRC)
Medical Research Council (MRC)
Wellcome Trust
Commission of the European Communities
Commission of the European Communities
Grant Number
088844/Z/09/Z
MR/K026666/1
MR/L012677/1
MR/K026682/1
097816/Z/11/B
ERC-2013-CoG-616417
701713
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
e1701156