The Effect of Ischemia and High-Fat Diet on Pericyte Fate

The purpose of my thesis was to assess the effects of high fat (HF) diet and ischemia on skeletal muscle pericytes. Pericytes are mural cells on the abluminal surface of capillaries that contribute to capillary stabilization and the regulation of angiogenesis, but their roles in the events that occur during muscle recovery from ischemia in patients with or without metabolic disorders remain to be established. I hypothesized that the number of capillary-associated pericytes and their phenotype will be altered by HF diet and ischemia. I used mice with fluorescently labelled pericytes (Ng2/DsRed) that were fed normal or HF diet and then underwent unilateral femoral artery ligation surgery to induce ischemia. My data showed that ischemia increased pericyte number through proliferation. Pericyte phenotype and morphology changed with ischemia, together with increased transcript levels of destabilizing factor Angiopoietin 2 mRNA. Overall, this study can be the first step in understanding the participation of pericytes in ischemic muscle recovery.