Morphological and molecular characterization of healthy human ascending aorta

Abstract

Knowledge of the characteristics of the normal human aorta has been constrained by lack of data on fresh aortic tissue, especially from healthy individuals. In this study, the gene expression and morphological characteristics of the thoracic ascending aorta (AA) of healthy organ donors have been evaluated, with the aim of providing reference data for the analysis of pathological AAs. We analysed by RT-PCR the differential expression of mRNAs coding for myocardin, smoothelin, alpha-smooth muscle actin (alpha-SMA) and the ED-A isoform of fibronectin (ED-A FN) in AA specimens from donors, integrating the results with immunohistochemical analysis of the same targets. Morphological and morphometric characteristics of the AAs were also evaluated. In order to account for possible regional variations in wall structure, the convexity of the aortic profile was compared to the concavity. No differences in gene expression occurred for any of the target genes between the concavity and the convexity of AAs. Immunohistochemistry revealed a different distribution of total FN and of its ED-A isoform in the media and in the intima. Smoothelin is expressed by the majority of cells in the media, with some positive cells also in the intima. Alpha-SMA is expressed in all the tunicae. Immunohistochemistry also revealed in the convexity of 50% of AAs the presence of discrete areas in the subadventital media with altered structure and cell morphology and with altered gene expression, resulting positive for ED-A FN and alpha-SMA, but not for smoothelin, indicating the occurrence of early lesions also in macroscopically healthy AAs