Valved Aortic Transplant Calcification Prevention And Re-endothelialization Study

Objective To study the calcification mechanism and the change of calcium content of aortic valved homograft after transplantation, evaluate the relationship between calcification and immunological rejection response, investigate the effect of immunosuppressive agents on the calcium content of the homograft and its mechanism of preventing calcification of the homograft.Methods Recipients were male Wistar rats and donors were female SD rats. Aortic valved homografts were heterotopically allografted onto abdominal aorta from SD rats to Wistar rats. The rats were randomly divided into 3 groups with 40 rats in each group. The test group was treated with CsA ( 15 mg/kg.dayx 14 days ), and the other group without any treatment served as control. In the isogeneic group the donors and the recipients were isogenous. Each group was randomly divided into 5 subgroups further with 8 rats in each subgroup. The rats were sacrificed in batches at 2 , 4, 8, 12 and 16 weeks postoperatively. Blood samples were obtained for detecting the expression of CD25, CD71, and the homografts were taken out for measuring the calcium content and...