Expression of caveolin-1 in human brain microvessels
Section snippets
Experimental procedures
Small pieces of adult human cerebral cortex of the parietal lobe, obtained at 10 diagnostic biopsies (patient age 50–60 years), were sampled and submitted to conventional histopathological analysis. Samples evaluated as histologically normal were utilised in this study.
Caveolin-1 and GFAP immunofluorescence confocal microscopy
In the human cerebral cortex, caveolin-1 immunoreactivity is detected on all the cortex microvessels and also on bodies of astrocyte-like cells that extend fine processes ending on the microvessel wall (Fig. 1A). At a distance from the microvessels, caveolin-1 immunoreactivity is only detectable as fluorescent puncta scattered in the neuropil (Fig. 1A). On the projection images, the staining pattern of caveolin-1 is finely punctate and evenly distributed on the wall of the microvessels, being
Discussion
Brain microvessels are the site of the BBB, a selective gate that controls the exchange of solutes, ions, nutrients, drugs, as well as immunological cells, between the blood and the brain. In the cerebral microvessel, besides the lining formed by ‘impermeable’ endothelial cells, poor in transport vesicles and sealed by tight junctions, and functionally characterised by specific enzymatic and transport systems (Reese and Karnovsky, 1967, Vorbrodt, 1988, Dermietzel and Krause, 1991), two other
Acknowledgements
We thank Giancarlo Amendoni, MD, for the linguistic help. This work was supported by grants from ‘Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche’ (CNR, to L.R.) and ‘Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca’ (MIUR, to D.V.).
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