Comparative study of microvascular function: Forearm blood flow versus dynamic retinal vessel analysis.

Objective: Recently, dynamic retinal vessel analysis (DVA) has gained interest for investigation of microvascular function but comparative measurements with standard methods like the forearm blood flow technique (FBF) are uncommon till now.

Methods: We recruited 23 high-risk cardiovascular patients (Risk) and 17 healthy persons (Ctrl). During the FBF experiment, postocclusive reactive hyperaemia (RH) as well as endothelium-dependent and independent vasodilation was measured by infusion of acetylcholine (ACh) and sodium nitroprusside (SNP) into the brachial artery.

Extrarenal Progenitor Cells Do Not Contribute to Renal Endothelial Repair.

Endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) may be relevant contributors to endothelial cell (EC) repair in various organ systems. In this study, we investigated the potential role of EPCs in renal EC repair. We analyzed the major EPC subtypes in murine kidneys, blood, and spleens after induction of selective EC injury using the concanavalin A/anti-concanavalin A model and after ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury as well as the potential of extrarenal cells to substitute for injured local EC.

A new apparatus for standardized rat kidney biopsy.

Survival biopsies are frequently applied in rat kidney disease models, but several drawbacks such as surgical kidney trauma, bleeding risk and variable loss of kidney tissue are still unsolved. Therefore, we developed an easy-to-use core biopsy instrument and evaluated whether two consecutive kidney biopsies within the same kidney can be carried out in a standardized manner. On day 0, 18 Lewis rats underwent a right nephrectomy and 9 of these rats a subsequent first biopsy of the left kidney (Bx group).