Summary
The doubly ligated common carotid artery of the rabbit was filled with either human serum beta or pre-beta lipoproteins and the morphological alterations were studied from one to twenty days post-ligation using electron microscopy and lipid histochemistry and compared with the contralateral carotid. Of interest was the general mode of cholesterol accumulation and its fate, and the effect on the artery of varying the cholesterol concentration within the injected lipoprotein (beta vs. pre-beta). The percentage of arterial cells with intracellular lipid droplets (mainly containing triglycerides) increased to a maximum of 85% four days post-ligation and gradually fell to 18% seventeen days after ligation. Cholesterol accumulated mostly in the intima and inner media following injections of beta lipoproteins and persisted up to the seventeenth day. Ultrastructurally exogenous cholesterol was thought to exist as vacuoles with transparent centers from which material had partially been extracted by the technical procedures. Such cholesterol was also seen as large lamellated bodies and occasionally as intracellular clefts. These findings were compared to the morphology of early human atherosclerosis, and to results of previous double-ligation studies.
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Hoff, H.F. Studies on the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis with experimental model systems. Virchows Arch. Abt. A Path. Anat. 352, 99–110 (1971). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00548368
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00548368