Proliferative Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells Stimulate Extracellular Matrix Production via Osteopontin/p38 MAPK Signaling Pathway

Extracellular matrix disorder and cellular phenotype transformation are the major histopathological features associated with ascending aortic aneurysms. Rare studies have investigated the relationship between cellular phenotype transformation and the abnormalities of the matrix constituents. In this study, we investigated whether the cellular phenotype transformation resulted in the extracellular matrix disorder.Aortic samples were obtained from...