Balloon injury-induced gene expression in common carotid arteries of wistar rat

The whole rat genome microarray expression profiling of carotid artery specimen was emplyed to identify the gene expression profile before and after balloon injury. In our study, the neointimal formation of carotid arteries was apparent at day 7 and markedly increased at day 21 after balloon injury. In order to investigate the underlying mechanism of neointimal formationin in injured carotid arteries, all genes involved in signaling pathways whose expression was altered 2-fold in injured carotid arteries at day 7 and day 21 as compared to uninjured arteries were filtered out. Expression of four genes (TLR4, IRAK1, IκBα, IL-1β) from TLR signaling pathway was quantified in the same RNA samples by quantitative real-time PCR, conforming that TLR signaling pathway participated in neointimal formation of carotid arteries after balloon injury. Balloon injury-induced gene expression in wistar rat was measured at day 7 and day 21 after balloon injury as compared with uninjured arteries. Two independent experiments were performed at each time (uninjured, day 7 or day 21) using different wistar rats for each experiment.