Chart pro software

Male Sprague Dawley rats (5~6 week-old and weighing 200~250 g, n=20) were purchased from Samtako, Inc. (Osan, Korea) and housed in accordance with the guidelines of the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) of the Chungnam National University. All animal experiments were approved by the IACUC. Rats were randomly assigned to the abdominal aortic coarctation and sham-operated control groups. In brief, after anesthesia via intraperitoneal injection of a mixture of ketamine (80 mg/kg) and xylazine (12 mg/kg), the abdomen was opened, a stainless wire (outer diameter, 0.34 mm) was placed on the site of the aorta between the right and left renal artery [11 (link)]. TSA (0.5 mg/kg/day) or vehicle (DMSO) was subcutaneously administered for 7 days. Rats were anesthetized with an intraperitoneal injection of a mixture of ketamine (80 mg/kg) and xylazine (12 mg/kg). Polyethylene tubing (PE-50) was inserted into the left common carotid artery and femoral artery and connected to a pressure transducer (Gould P23XL) and preamplifier (Grass Model PI-1, USA). The systolic, diastolic, and mean blood pressures were analyzed with the Chartpro software (ADInstruments, Colorado Springs, CO, USA).

A 2~3mm blood vessel from an atherosclerotic carotid arteries was harvested from the rat and was attached to a force transducer (Adinstruments, USA), while bathed in a Krebs buffer solution (NaCl 100 mM, KCl 4.7 mM, CaCl2 1.9 mM, MgSO4 1.2 mM, K2HPO4 1.03 mM, NaHCO2 25 mM, pH 7.4) in order to see how much the vessel was contracted in response to the solution. The vessel was contracted with 0.3 uM L-phenylephrine hydrochloride (PE) and subsequently relaxed by a cumulative addition of acetylcholine chloride (Ach) to investigate endothelial-dependent relaxation, using Chartpro software (Adinstruments, USA) [32 (link)].