Figure 3.
Histomorphometric observations in balloon-injured carotid arteries of Watanabe rabbits treated with Ad-TFPI. The carotid arteries of 12- to 16-month-old Watanabe rabbits of either sex were treated at the time of severe balloon injury with Ad-TFPI, encoding a human TFPI cDNA, or Ad-RR, an identical vector minus the transgene. Both vectors were locally delivered at a titer of 1 × 1010 pfu/ml. Animals were killed 4 weeks after injury, and carotid arteries were processed as described in Methods. Quantitative histomorphometry was performed in blinded fashion. Shown are (a) individual intima/media ratios observed in injured and adenovirally treated arterial sections; (b) mean areas of intima and media and mean intima/media ratios; (c) the degree of stenosis in the injured arteries; (d) the average outer diameter of the media, computed as average diameter between opposite sides of the media/adventitia border (a measure of external vessel size independent of dissection artifacts of the adventitia) and the average lumen area; and (e) intima/media ratio and stenosis of the uninjured contralateral carotid arteries.