Fig. 5.

Perivascular nerve/axon varicosities in basilar artery of a normal (A) and hypertensive (B) rats immunolabelled for ET-1. a Note granular (gv) and agranular (av) vesicles; core of granular vesicles is intensely labelled for ET-1. In B note damaged axon varicosity with clustered agranular vesicles (av), vacuoles with dense material (v), and ‘empty’ areas of axoplasm (asterisk). Adjacent ET-1-negative varicosity (Ax) is of normal appearance with evenly distributed vesicles. Bars: 0.2 µm. Rabbit polyclonal ET-1 antibodies to human/porcine ET-1 (a from CRB, Cambridge, UK; b from Sigma, Poole, UK) was used at 1:1,000 in the preembedding PAP method; antibodies do not cross-react with big ET but may with ET-2 and ET-3. A is modified from Loesch et al. Neuroreport 1998, 9:3903-3906 [Lippincott Williams & Wilkins] and B is from Milner et al. J Vasc Res 2000; 37:39-49 [S Karger AG, Basel/Medical and Science publishers], which is kindly acknowledged