A research group led by Professor Masami Murakami of Gunma University measured how much the cells move in the vascular tissue when thyroid hormone is applied to the cultured cells of the vascular endothelium, and elucidated the mechanism of vascular repair. ..
Thyroid hormone acts on various organs, but this time we focused on the action on vascular endothelial cells.It is known that vascular endothelial cells move to the site when the inside of a blood vessel is damaged and promote repair.It has also been found that in the early stages of arteriosclerosis, the function of the vascular endothelial cells that line the blood vessels is impaired.Thyroid hormone is thought to be involved in this function, but details have not yet been clarified.
The thyroid gland mainly secretes a hormone called T4. It is known that T4 itself has poor activity as a hormone and exerts its function by being converted into a substance called T3 by an enzyme.The normal role of T3 is to work on genes to regulate the synthesis of proteins required for cell activity.However, it takes several hours from the action of T3 to the synthesis of protein.In this study, we first investigated the activity of cells by allowing T4 to act on vascular endothelial cells.As a result, it was found that the cells were activated in a short time of a few minutes.This means that it directly activates vascular endothelial cells without going through the steps of acting on genes or regulating protein synthesis.
This indicates that thyroid hormone acts directly on vascular endothelial cells to promote cell migration and may be involved in vascular repair.In the future, we plan to utilize these functions of these thyroid hormones to lead to new preventive and therapeutic methods for arteriosclerosis.
Source:[Gunma University] Elucidation of the mechanism of vascular repair by thyroid hormone (PDF)