background: vascular calcification is an important stage in atherosclerosis. during this stage, vascular smooth muscle cells (vsmc) synthesize many osteogenic factors such as osteonectin (encoded by sparc). oxidative stress plays a critical role in atherosclerosis progression, and its accumulation in the vascular wall stimulates the development of atherosclerosis and vascular calcification. the...

Background Uremia is a vasculopathic process, and both cardiac calcification and vascular calcification seen from the early stages of chronic kidney disease. Osteoprotegerin could play a crucial role in atherosclerotic plaque formation, maturation and calcification. The goal of this study was to determine the relationship of serum osteoprotegerin with vascular calcification in patients with end...

Artery calcification reflects an admixture of factors such as ectopic osteochondral differentiation with primary host pathological conditions. We review how genetic factors, as identified by human genome-wide association studies, and incomplete correlations with various mouse studies, including knockout and strain analyses, fit into "pieces of the puzzle" in intimal calcification in human ather...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Our aim was to assess the feasibility of carotid artery stent placement (CAS) for calcified lesions. MATERIALS AND METHODS Using embolic protection devices (EPDs), we performed 51 CAS procedures in 43 patients with severe carotid artery stenosis accompanied by plaque calcification. Before intervention, all lesions were subjected to multidetector-row CT. The arc of the c...

BACKGROUND Vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) in atherosclerotic lesions display an osteogenic phenotype, and calcification commonly occurs in association with lipid. We therefore tested the hypothesis that lipid components in atherosclerotic lesions influenced VSMC phenotype and calcification using an in vitro model of calcification. METHODS AND RESULTS In situ hybridization of human ather...

Zooxanthellate corals are known to increase calcification rates when exposed to light, a phenomenon called light-enhanced calcification that is believed to be mediated by symbionts’ photosynthetic activity. There is controversy over the mechanism behind this phenomenon, with hypotheses coarsely divided between abiotic and biologically-mediated mechanisms. At the same time, accumulating evidence...

A 32-year-old man with graft loss due to chronic rejection received a 2nd kidney allograft from a living donor in the left iliac fossa, while the 1st was left in the contralateral side. An episode of acute rejection occurred at 1 month, resolved by steroid therapy. The 2nd allograft developed chronic allograft nephropathy, resulting in graft failure after 30 months of retransplant. Contrast-enh...

Vascular calcification is a common feature of major cardiovascular diseases. Extracellular vesicles participate in the formation of microcalcifications that are implicated in atherosclerotic plaque rupture; however, the mechanisms that regulate formation of calcifying extracellular vesicles remain obscure. Here, we have demonstrated that sortilin is a key regulator of smooth muscle cell (SMC) c...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE This study was designed to determine whether calcification of the cavernous carotid artery (CCA) is associated with cerebrovascular infarcts in the same way that coronary artery calcification scores indicate myocardial infarctions. We sought to correlate the grade of CCA calcification with infarctions in the middle cerebral artery (MCA) distribution. METHODS Nonenhanced...