Volume 89 Issue 3, March 2009

Cover: Aortic wall stained with picrosirius red and viewed with circularly polarized light; thick collagen fibers appear orange and thin fibers appear green. Collagen content in the tunica adventitia increased significantly in the suprarenal abdominal aorta of apolipoprotein E-deficient mice expressing collagenase-resistant mutant collagen type I after angiotensin II infusion. We propose that increased collagen content combined with a change from three-dimensional to two-dimensional collagen fiber waviness increases aortic stiffness and thereby promotes aneurysm formation. For more information see the paper by Deguchi et al, pages 315–326