Mechanisms of Fibrotic Aortic Valve Stenosis

To examine molecular mechanisms of aortic valve stenosis in mice with hypertension and hypercholesterolemia, RNA-Seq was used during the developmental phase of stenosis to identify new gene targets. Four groups of mice were studied: controls (CON), hypertensive (HT), hypercholesterolemic (HC), and HC/HT. Transgenic mice overexpressing human renin and human angiotensinogen served as the HT model and ApoE knockout mice served as the HC model. A sample size of N=4 was used for each of the four groups.