The Study of the Aorta Metallomics in the Context of Atherosclerosis.

Aleksandra Kuzan,Marta Wujczyk,Rafal J Wiglusz

doi:10.3390/biom11070946

Aleksandra Kuzan, Marta Wujczyk + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/biom11070946

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Abstract

Atherosclerosis is a multifactorial disease, for which the etiology is so complex that we are currently unable to prevent it and effectively lower the statistics on mortality from cardiovascular diseases. Parallel to modern analyses in molecular biology and biochemistry, we want to carry out analyses at the level of micro- and macroelements in order to discover the interdependencies between elements during atherogenesis. In this work, we used the Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometer (ICP-OES) to determine the content of calcium, magnesium, iron, copper, chromium, zinc, manganese, cadmium, lead, and zinc in the aorta sections of people who died a sudden death. We also estimated the content of metalloenzymes MMP-9, NOS-3, and SOD-2 using the immunohistochemical method. It was observed that with the age of the patient, the calcium content of the artery increased, while the content of copper and iron decreased. Very high correlations (correlation coefficient above 0.8) were observed for pairs of parameters in women: Mn–Ca, Fe–Cu, and Ca–Cd, and in men: Mn–Zn. The degree of atherosclerosis negatively correlated with magnesium and with cadmium. Chromium inhibited absorption of essential trace elements such as Cu and Fe due to its content being above the quantification threshold only if Cu and Fe were lower. Moreover, we discussed how to design research for the future in order to learn more about the pathomechanism of atherosclerosis and the effect of taking dietary supplements on the prevalence of cardiovascular diseases.

Highlights

To allow the degree of atherosclerosis to be correlated with the content of selected elements, the six-degree scale according to the American Heart Association (AHA) scale [25,26] was used
Four of the analytes had such low tissue contents that only some samples had detectable amounts. This was the case for cadmium, which had a detectable amount in eight cases; chromium, for which there were six samples above the assay’s quantification; manganese, for which 23 samples had values above quantification, and lead, which had detectable content in only four samples
We propose a theory that the more iron, the more copper and zinc accumulate in Cu/Zn Super oxide dismutase (SOD) by a compensation mechanism

Summary

Introduction

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cardiovascular medicine seems to be developing towards surgery and molecular diagnostics [1,2], while basic research has not yet provided a complete answer to the question of the pathomechanism of atherosclerosis. The main functions of macro- and micronutrients are known and described, but the interdependence of the various elements remains unknown in many cases. We describe the characteristics of each element that interested us in this project, emphasizing the context of its impact on the development of atherosclerosis

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