Fig. 1.

Hyperglycemia induces HSP22 upregulation and endothelial injuryin vivo. Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) mice were induced with a high-fat diet (HFD; 60% of calories from fat) and injected with streptozotocin (STZ; 100 mg/kg) or buffer for 12 weeks (n = 8 per group). A) Blood glucose concentrations in control, HFD-control and diabetic mice were measured at baseline and 4, 8, and 12 weeks after diabetes induction. B) The body weights of the control, HFD-control and diabetic mice were measured at baseline and 4, 8, and 12 weeks after diabetes induction. C) Representative images of hematoxylin and eosin staining (H&E, original magnification ×40). D) Representative immunohistochemical staining images of ICAM-1, VCAM-1 and HSP22 in aortic sections (original magnification ×40). E) Quantification of positive staining for ICAM-1 and VCAM-1 in aortic rings. n = 5. F) Representative images of a gene heat map from a cytokine array. Serum was obtained from each group of mice for a murine cytokine array analysis. Unsupervised hierarchical clustering of genes was performed to generate heat maps showing the genes that were regulated by hyperglycemia (n = 3 per group). G) Quantification of the fluorescence intensities of cytokine levels in serum. H) mRNA expression of IL5, IL6, IL13, Mip3α and TGFβ1 in the aorta. I) Quantification of positive staining for HSP22 in aortic sections. n = 5. J) mRNA expression of HSP22 in the aorta. ^*P < 0.05 vs. Control; ^#P < 0.05 vs. HFD-control.