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. 2019 Mar 27;9:5280. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-41747-4

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© The Author(s) 2019

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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Characteristics of capillary ultrastructure in the cervical spinal cord of G93A mice. (A) Electron microscopy examination of microvasculature in the cervical ventral horn. Control mouse showed typical ultrastructure of endothelium, adjacent pericytes, tight junctions, neuropil, and axons (a,b). Capillary consisted of an endothelial cell and a single layer of basement membrane surrounding by astrocyte foot processes. Mitochondria and myelinated axons were well preserved. In media-treated mice at 17 weeks of age, swollen or vacuolated endothelial cells (c,d), degenerated astrocyte foot-processes (e), and extensive perivascular protein-filled edema (d) were determined in numerous capillaries. Large autophagosome (a) was found in cytoplasm of endothelial cell. Some capillaries showed pericytes with small cell processes (d). (c,d,e) Swollen and/or degenerated free floating mitochondria indicated by (!) and degenerated myelinated axons were noted. (f,g,h) Numerous capillaries demonstrated typical endothelium morphology, pericytes, and perivascular astrocytes in mice after cell treatment. Multiple pericyte cell extensions (h) were visible under capillary basement membrane. Some areas of perivascular edema between capillary and astrocyte end-feet (f,h) and reduced axonal myelin (g) were determined. Capillary tight junction was well defined (h). En – endothelial cell, Tj – tight junction, BM – basement membrane, P - pericyte, Aph – autophagosome, Ast – astrocyte, A – axon, m – mitochondrion, v – vacuole, Nu – nuclei, * - perivascular edema, ! - swollen and/or degenerated mitochondria. Scale bar in a, c, d, e is 500 nm; b, f, g, h is 2 µm. (B) Quantitative analysis of capillary morphology in the cervical ventral horn. Control mice showed a high percentage of capillaries with normal morphology and low numbers of moderately impaired capillaries. Media mice demonstrated a significant decrease of morphologically normal capillaries, an increase of capillaries with moderate impairment, and a high percentage of severely damaged microvessels. Cell-treated mice displayed a significant increase of capillaries with normal morphology and a decreased percentage of severely compromised capillaries vs. media-injected animals. However, no significant differences were found between cell-treated and media-treated mice in the percentage of capillaries with moderate morphological impairment. ^*p < 0.05, ^**p < 0.01.