Looking inside blood vessels
Nature Medicine
November 7, 2011
A method for the simultaneous structural and molecular imaging of arterial walls is reported online this week in Nature Medicine. This technique could have potential applications in the clinical management of atherosclerosis, identifying coronary arterial plaques before they cause ruptures in patients.
Methods to study atherosclerotic plaques in relation to the molecular mechanisms that underlie their initiation and progression could be very useful to identify people at risk for complications such as myocardial infarction and sudden cardiac death.
Guillermo Tearney and his colleagues report the development of an intra-arterial catheter for simultaneous structural and molecular imaging in living rabbits. The team used this technique to obtain detailed information on what happens inside the blood vessel in cases of microthrombosis and atherosclerosis.
doi: 10.1038/nm.2555
Research highlights
-
Aug 12
Ageing: Mutations in the ageing human heart identifiedNature Aging
-
Aug 12
Palaeontology: T. rex and relatives traded big eyes for bigger bitesCommunications Biology
-
Aug 10
Epidemiology: Estimating the risk of SARS-related coronaviruses from bats in Southeast AsiaNature Communications
-
Aug 5
Microbiology: Single switch makes Escherichia coli beneficial insect partnerNature Microbiology
-
Aug 5
Conservation: More than half of unassessable species may be at risk of extinctionCommunications Biology
-
Aug 4
Physiology: Restoring cellular functions in pigs after deathNature