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This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) All Versions of this Article: 296/5/H1321    most recent 00440.2008v1 Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Wang, Z. Articles by Ferrari, M. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Wang, Z. Articles by Ferrari, M.

Hypoxia during pregnancy in rats leads to early morphological changes of atherosclerosis in adult offspring

Departments of ¹Cardiology and ²Ultrasound, Second Affiliated Hospital of Fujian Medical University, Quanzhou, Fujian, China; and ³Department of Internal Medicine I, Division of Cardiology, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Jena, Germany

Submitted 27 April 2008 ; accepted in final form 16 March 2009

Exposure to an adverse intrauterine environment increases the risk of cardiovascular disease later in adult life. However, the time course relationship between prenatal hypoxia and the onset of atherosclerosis in offspring remains unknown. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the role of reduced fetal oxygen supply on early development of atherogenesis in the adult offspring and further assess its susceptibility to sex-, hyperlipidemia-, and postnatal hypoxemia-related differences. Based on a 4 x 2 full factorial design consisting of four factors of maternal hypoxia, sex, hyperlipidemia, and postnatal hypoxemia, characteristics of growth were determined, and histopathological observation and morphometric analysis of the thoracic aortas were performed in Sprague-Dawley rat offspring. Intrauterine growth restriction, altered body shape at birth, and accelerated postnatal weight gain occurred in the maternal hypoxia group but did not occur in the control group. In 16-mo-old maternal hypoxia offspring, the thoracic aortas exhibited lesions similar to early events in atherosclerosis that involved impaired endothelial cells, thickening and fibration of intimas, infiltration of inflammatory cells to the subendothelial space, and migration and proliferation of vascular smooth muscle cells to the intima. In contrast, no detectable pathological changes were observed in the offspring without maternal hypoxia exposure. Morphometric analysis further demonstrated that prenatal hypoxia caused a significant thickening of intima (P < 0.001) with a main effect of 5.5 µm, an approximately twofold increase compared with controls. In addition, there was a positive additive relationship between prenatal hypoxia and hyperlipidemia on the intimal thickness (P < 0.05). There were no other main effects or interaction among these four factors. In summary, our results indicate that maternal hypoxia during pregnancy leads to early pathological appearances of atherogenesis in adult offspring. This effect was enhanced with hyperlipemia but was unaffected by postnatal hypoxia or sex.

fetal programming; intimal thickness; sex; hyperlipidemia; postnatal hypoxemia