Arterial Disease Flashcards
What is Arteriosclerosis?
Arteriosclerosis is a general umbrella term describing diseases where the wall of the artery becomes thicker, harder, and less elastic than normal.
You can figure that out right from the name: “arterio” which is Greek for artery, and sclerosis which is Greek for “hardening”.
What is s arteriolosclerosis?
The word arteriolosclerosis is any sort of hardening of small arteries and arterioles.
This is also pretty easy to remember since the “olo” in the middle of the word indicates small arterioles.
What is Atherosclerosis?
Atherosclerosis is the hardening of any artery (even though it’s usually medium- to large-sized arteries) which is caused by the buildup of plaque.
Using their definitions, distinguish between arteriosclerosis, arteriolosclerosis and atherosclerosis.
Arteriosclerosis is a general umbrella term describing diseases where the wall of the artery becomes thicker, harder, and less elastic than normal.
Arteriolosclerosis is any sort of hardening of small arteries in arterioles.
Atherosclerosis is the hardening of any artery (even though it’s usually medium- to large-sized arteries) which is caused by the buildup of plaque.
What are the plaques in arteriosclerosis called? Where do they form?
These plaques are called atheromatous plaques and happen in the innermost wall of the blood vessel called the tunica intima or endothelium.
How many layers of cells is the endothelium made up of? What is the function of the endothelial layer of the blood vessels?
The blood vessel endothelium is made up of a single layer of cells and does two jobs:
First,it protects the rest of the blood vessel wall from the blood,
Secondly, it secretes proteins on its surface to prevent the blood from clotting, because blood just inherently likes to clot whenever it gets the chance.
Name factors that could cause damage to the endothelium.
The Endothelium can become damaged in lots of different ways.
Low density lipoproteins
chemicals from smoking cigarettes
High blood pressure
all these wreak havoc on the endothelium because these irritants break down the endothelium
What happens when the endothelium gets damaged by factors such as smoking and high BP?
The damaged endothelium allow low-density lipoproteins to enter the endothelial wall.
The white blood cells called monocyte follow the low-density lipoproteins and break them down through oxidation.
What are Foam cells, how are they formed?
Explain.
Monocytes follow the LDL entering the damaged endothelium.
One might think macrophages eating the embedded low-density lipoproteins is a good thing, but if there is a lot of low-density lipoprotein, then the macrophage will eat so much cholesterol that it can die. It basically eats itself to death.
After it dies, it deposits itself under the damaged endothelium. So now we have a dead macrophage filled with low density lipoprotein stuck in the damaged endothelium as well.
These dead macrophages are called foam cells.
