Endothelial Mitosis around Aortic Branches in Normal Guinea-pigs

Abstract

ALTSCHUL¹ states that “it is well known that endothelium is an extremely thin cell layer…. This lining of single cells is exposed to pressure of the blood, whorling and shearing forces and displacement and compression due to vascular contraction, to decreased or abolished blood flow and to other impacts which act from inside and outside the body…. It is difficult to assume that these thinned-out, battered endothelial cells survive … from early childhood to old age without replacement”. Yet he proceeds to show that mitosis is seldom encountered. Poole, Sanders and Florey² reported slow regeneration of endothelium from the edges of experimentally denuded areas in rabbit aorta and illustrated mitotic division in their photomicrographs. Denudation of endothelium was produced by Fry³ by raising the blood velocity to 379 ± 85 dynes/cm³ for 1 h which caused cell disintegration, dissolution and erosion; but he made no observations of subsequent recovery of the tissue.