Figure 1.

Carotid arterial wire injury. (a) Representative H&E-stained sections of noninjured and injured carotid arteries (harvested 6 hours after endothelial denudation) from one of two different CD1 mice. Endothelial nuclei apparent in the noninjured vessel (arrowheads) are not seen after injury. (b) Elastase activity from pooled homogenates of three or four vessels was assayed and expressed per artery after a calculation based on a standard plot generated by using known concentrations of human leukocyte elastase. Bar at 6 hours represents an average of two separate experiments with similar values of 0.315 and 0.346 mU per artery. Recombinant human elafin (rElafin; 2 ng) completely abolished the elastase activity observed at 6 hours and 7 days after injury.