Abstract
The intravital microscopy in the mouse cremaster muscle microcirculation is a method widely used to visualize in vivo blood cells interacting with the endothelium and within the vessels. Therefore, it is a suitable technique to study leukocyte-endothelial cell interactions along every stage of the canonical leukocyte recruitment cascade: rolling, adhesion, intravascular crawling, and migration both in postcapillary venules and arterioles of the mouse cremasteric microcirculation. This technique also enables to assess vessel functionality, since hemodynamic parameters such as shear stress, flow rate, and vasodilatation/vasoconstriction, among other vascular events, can be additionally determined. Furthermore, response to multiple drugs and mechanisms underlying blood cells interactions within the vascular system can be studied in a real scenario. This chapter describes a protocol for intravital microscopy in the mouse cremaster muscle microcirculation.
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Acknowledgments
The CNIC is supported by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad and by the Pro-CNIC Foundation. C.R. holds a postdoctoral contract associated with grant RD12/0042/0028 (Red de Investigación Cardiovascular, Instituto de Salud Carlos III).
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Rius, C., Sanz, M.J. (2015). Intravital Microscopy in the Cremaster Muscle Microcirculation for Endothelial Dysfunction Studies. In: Andrés, V., Dorado, B. (eds) Methods in Mouse Atherosclerosis. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1339. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2929-0_26
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2929-0_26
Publisher Name: Humana Press, New York, NY
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Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-2929-0
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