Effect of androgen on aldosterone and high salt induced aortic aneurysms in mice

Aortic aneurysm is a highly age- and sex-dependent cardiovascular disease in human, which men are at 4 to 6 times higher risk than women. We recently established an age-dependent animal model in which aldosterone and high salt administration induces aortic aneurysms in 10-month-old wildtype male mice. But whether it exhibits sex differences as in human remains unknown. The current study reports that androgen is a main driver for the sexual dimorphic response to aldosterone and high salt induced aortic aneurysms in mice. To explore the mechanism, aortas were isolated from three groups of mice as described below for transcriptomic profiling. To investigate the androgen effect, we isolated whole aortas from 10-month-old male C57BL/6 mice administered aldosterone and salt for seven days with following conditions: 1) sham-operated mice to serve as control; 2) orchiectomized mice to study androgen deprivation effects; and 3) orchiectomized mice given dihydrotestosterone pellet to restore androgen level