Department of Biomedical Engineering, Lerner Research Institute, Cleveland Clinic, 9500 Euclid Ave. ND20, Cleveland, OH, 44195, USA.
Advanced Platform Technology Center, Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center, Cleveland, OH, USA.
Ann Biomed Eng. 2021 Aug;49(8):1909-1922. doi: 10.1007/s10439-021-02760-9. Epub 2021 Mar 23.
Pelvic organ prolapse (POP) is common among older women who have delivered children vaginally. While the pathophysiology is not fully delineated, POP can occur in part from insufficient repair of disrupted elastic matrix fibers. Quantification of structural changes to elastic fibers has not been described previously for POP. The goal of this paper is to present a validated technique for morphometric analysis of elastic fibers in vaginal tissue cultures from lysyl oxidase like-1 knock out (LOXL1 KO) mice with POP. The effect of LOXL1 KO, effect of POP, effect of culture, and effect of elastogenic treatment on the changes in elastin fiber characteristics were tested using vaginal tissues from wild type multiparous (WT), LOXL1 KO multiparous prolapsed (POP) and LOXL1 KO multiparous non-prolapsed (NP) mice. Our results show significantly higher mean aspect ratio, maximum diameter and perimeter length in POP compared to NP after 3 weeks of tissue culture. Further, treatment of POP tissues in culture with growth factors with previously documented elastogenic effects caused a significant increase in the mean area and perimeter length of elastic fibers. This technique thus appears to be useful in quantifying structural changes and can be used to assess the pathophysiology of POP and the effect of elastogenic treatments with potential for POP.
盆腔器官脱垂（POP）在经阴道分娩的老年妇女中很常见。虽然其病理生理学尚未完全阐明，但 POP 部分可能是由于破坏的弹性基质纤维修复不足引起的。以前没有描述过 POP 中弹性纤维的结构变化的定量。本文的目的是介绍一种经赖氨酸氧化酶样-1 敲除（LOXL1 KO）小鼠具有 POP 的阴道组织培养物中弹性纤维形态计量分析的验证技术。使用来自野生型多产（WT）、LOXL1 KO 多产脱垂（POP）和 LOXL1 KO 多产非脱垂（NP）小鼠的阴道组织，测试了 LOXL1 KO、POP 的影响、培养的影响和弹性纤维治疗的效果对弹性纤维特征的变化的影响。我们的结果表明，在组织培养 3 周后，POP 的平均纵横比、最大直径和周长长度明显高于 NP。此外，用先前证明具有弹性生成作用的生长因子处理培养中的 POP 组织会导致弹性纤维的平均面积和周长长度显著增加。因此，该技术似乎可用于定量结构变化，并可用于评估 POP 的病理生理学以及具有 POP 潜力的弹性生成治疗的效果。
