A substance used to treat blood clots may also be involved in atherosclerosis. In this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. UW researchers reported that elevated levels of urokinase-type plasminogen activator (urokinase) can cause constriction of blood vessels.
Study author David Dichek, professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology, and his colleagues were trying to determine if genetic engineering of blood vessels to express higher levels of urokinase would prevent thrombosis, or clot formation, in situations where atherosclerosis already existed. Dichek’s previous studies had looked at the effect of genetic over-expression of urokinase during an hour-long experiment.
This latest study looked at the result of two weeks of increased expression of urokinase on the carotid arteries of cholesterol-fed rabbits. By four weeks after the gene transfer, the inner lining of the rabbits’ artery walls had thickened by about 70 percent. Urokinase pathways may present a target for pharmaceutical or gene therapy for atherosclerosis.
August 2, 2002
