Fig. 2.
Effects of smooth muscle-specific Na+/Ca2+ exchanger-1 (NCX1) overexpression on femoral artery cytosolic Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]CYT), diameter, and tone. Baseline diameter and passive diameter (PD; A), basal tone (PD − baseline diameter as %PD; B), and basal [Ca2+]CYT (C) in the exposed femoral arteries of control (Ctrl) and transgenic (TG) mice in vivo under light anesthesia are shown. Baseline diameter was reduced, and basal tone and [Ca2+]CYT were increased, in TG mouse arteries. *P < 0.05 vs. Ctrl mice (Student’s unpaired t-test); ***P < 0.001 vs. Ctrl mice; ###P < 0.001 vs. the respective basal diameter (two-way ANOVA with pairwise comparisons using the Holm-Sidak method). Numbers of Ctrl and TG mice are shown in parentheses at the top. The difference between mean Ctrl PD and TG PD was not significant (P = 0.085 by two-way ANOVA). When mean PD values from six independent experiments (with 51 Ctrl arteries and 51 TG arteries) were analyzed, however, the respective means of the means from each experiment (Ctrl PD: 397.2 ± 3.9 μm and TG PD: 379.5 ± 5.3 μm) were significantly different (P = 0.023 by a Student’s unpaired t-test). The 95% confidence interval for the difference of the means was 3.043–32.291; the power of the t-test was 0.617.