Abstract
Atherosclerosis is a chronic inflammatory disease characterized by the formation of lipid-rich, fibrous plaques within the arterial wall of medium and large arteries. Plaques prone to rupture are typically rich in lipids and pro-inflammatory markers. Cells within the plaque can take up lipids via different mechanisms leading to the formation and accumulation of lipid-rich foam cells, a key hallmark of the disease. Evaluation of plaque burden and lipid content is hence important to determine disease progression and severity. This chapter describes the most commonly used staining methods that enable visualization and analysis of mouse atherosclerotic plaques. These methods include en face preparation of mouse aorta, and staining sections of arteries using hematoxylin and eosin, Oil Red O, and Masson’s Trichrome.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the British Heart Foundation for financial support (grants PG/16/25/32097 and FS/17/75/33257). AA and RA received PhD studentships from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (Jeddah University).
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Chan, YH., Alahmadi, A., Alotibi, R., Ramji, D.P. (2022). Evaluation of Plaque Burden and Lipid Content in Atherosclerotic Plaques. In: Ramji, D. (eds) Atherosclerosis. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2419. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-1924-7_29
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-1924-7_29
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