Vascular Remodeling in Health and Disease

The term vascular remodeling is commonly used to define the structural changes in blood vessel geometry that occur in response to long-term physiologic alterations in blood flow or in response to vessel wall injury brought about by trauma or underlying cardiovascular diseases.1, 2, 3, 4 The process of remodeling, which begins as an adaptive response to long-term hemodynamic alterations such as elevated shear stress or increased intravascular pressure, may eventually become maladaptive, leading to impaired vascular function. The vascular endothelium, owing to its location lining the lumen of blood vessels, plays a pivotal role in regulation of all aspects of vascular function and homeostasis.5 Thus, not surprisingly, endothelial dysfunction has been recognized as the harbinger of all major cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension, atherosclerosis, and diabetes.6, 7, 8 The endothelium elaborates a variety of substances that influence vascular tone and protect the vessel wall against inflammatory cell adhesion, thrombus formation, and vascular cell proliferation.8, 9, 10 Among the primary biologic mediators emanating from the endothelium is nitric oxide (NO) and the arachidonic acid metabolite prostacyclin [prostaglandin I2 (PGI2)], which exert powerful vasodilatory, antiadhesive, and antiproliferative effects in the vessel wall

Danshen protects endothelial progenitor cells from oxidized low-density lipoprotein induced impairment*

In this study, we examined the protective effects of Danshen both on endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) in patients with hypercholesterolemia and on in-vitro EPCs of healthy volunteers. In the clinical study, we randomly divided 24 subjects with hypercholesterolemia into two groups (the control group and the Danshen-treated group). At the end of two weeks of treatment, the EPC cellular functions of both groups were tested. The results indicated that, compared to the control group, EPCs in the Danshen-treated group showed significantly better cellular functions, which was manifested in the cloning number, the proliferation capacity, the number of EPC adhesions, and cell migration. In the subsequent in-vitro experiments, EPCs were treated with vehicle, oxidized low-density lipoprotein (Ox-LDL, 100 μg/ml), or Ox-LDL (100 μg/ml) plus different concentrations of Danshen (Danshensu 2, 10, or 50 μg/ml, respectively) for 24 h. The results showed that Danshen treatments can prevent the detrimental effects of Ox-LDL on EPC cellular functions measured by proliferation capacity (0.24±0.08, 0.37±0.11, 0.30±0.04 vs. 0.13±0.02, P<0.05, P<0.01, and P<0.01, respectively), and adhesion ability (63.00±11.60, 70.00±10.80, 85.50±11.41 vs. 40.50±6.85, all P<0.01). Compared to the group treated with Ox-LDL alone, Danshen treatment significantly decreased the lipid peroxidation end product malondialdehyde (MDA) [(4.34±0.54), (3.98±0.47), (3.46±0.31) vs. (5.57±0.64) nmol/ml, all P<0.01], increased the production of superoxide dismutase (SOD) [(29.74±0.71), (31.09±0.83), (30.41±0.65) vs. (14.76±3.99) U/ml, all P<0.01], and lowered the expression of interleukin-6 (IL-6) [(24.62±7.69), (27.04±3.14), (33.38±18.86) vs. (230.67±33.53) pg/ml, all P<0.01] and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) [(41.72±6.10), (17.02±6.82), (3.73±2.26) vs. (228.71±41.53) pg/ml, all P<0.01] in Ox-LDL treated EPCs. These results suggest that Danshen may exert a protective effect through its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory features