ABSTRACT
Abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) is the progressive dilation of the abdominal aorta. Nicotine is reported to be associated with the development and rupture of AAA, but the pathological effects of nicotine on normal rat aorta have not been determined. We investigated pathological changes in the aortic wall of rats caused by the administration of nicotine. Nicotine administration weakened the vascular wall, increased gelatinolytic activity and promoted the destruction of elastin and collagen in the rat abdominal aorta. There were no differences in the areas positive for matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-2 and MMP-9 between the control and nicotine treated groups. The areas positive for MMP-12 in the nicotine group were significantly greater than for the control group. Gelatinolytic activity in the aortic wall was increased significantly in the nicotine group. Our findings suggest that MMP-12 is sensitive to nicotine exposure in rats.
Subject(s)
Aorta, Abdominal/drug effects , Nicotine/pharmacology , Animals , Aorta, Abdominal/physiopathology , Aortic Aneurysm, Abdominal/drug therapy , Collagen/metabolism , Disease Models, Animal , Male , Matrix Metalloproteinases/metabolism , Rats, Sprague-DawleyABSTRACT
To examine the role of human chromosome 10 in development of prostatic cancer, we introduced human chromosome 10 into highly metastatic rat prostatic cancer cells by microcell-mediated chromosome transfer. Microcell hybrid cells introduced with human chromosome 10 showed suppression of the metastatic ability to the lung to some extent without any suppression of tumorigenicity, although the tumor growth rate decreased slightly. To minimize the region that contains metastasis suppressive activity, the hybrid cells in metastasis foci of lung were established in culture and reanalyzed for portions of human chromosome 10 retained in the metastasis tissues. Cytogenetic and molecular analyses demonstrated that loss of the region between 10cen and D10S215 on human chromosome arm 10q was related to expression of the metastatic phenotype. These results demonstrate that the region between 10cen and D10S215 on human chromosome arm 10q contains at least one of the metastasis suppressor genes for rat prostatic cancer.