Journal of Lipid Research
Volume 53, Issue 8, August 2012, Pages 1569-1575
Journal home page for Journal of Lipid Research

Research Articles
Lipids in biocalcification: contrasts and similarities between intimal and medial vascular calcification and bone by NMR[S]

https://doi.org/10.1194/jlr.M026088Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
open access

Pathomechanisms underlying vascular calcification biogenesis are still incompletely understood. Biomineral from human atherosclerotic intimal plaques; human, equine, and bovine medial vascular calcifications; and human and equine bone was released from collagenous organic matrix by sodium hydroxide/sodium hypochlorite digestion. Solid-state 13C NMR of intimal plaque mineral shows signals from cholesterol/cholesteryl esters and fatty acids. In contrast, in mineral from pure medial calcifications and bone mineral, fatty acid signals predominate. Refluxing (chloroform/methanol) intimal plaque calcifications removes the cholesterylic but not the fatty acyl signals. The lipid composition of this refluxed mineral now closely resembles that of the medial and bone mineral, which is unchanged by reflux. Thus, intimal and medial vascular calcifications and bone mineral have in common a pool of occluded mineral-entrained fatty acyl-rich lipids. This population of fatty acid may contain methyl-branched fatty acids, possibly representing lipoprotein particle remnants. Cell signaling and mechanistic parallels between physiological (orthotopic) and pathological (ectopic) calcification are also reflected thus in the NMR spectroscopic fingerprints of mineral-associated and mineral-entrained lipids. Additionally the atherosclerotic plaque mineral alone shows a significant independent pool of cholesterylic lipids. Colocalization of mineral and lipid may be coincidental, but it could also reflect an essential mechanistic component of biomineralization.

cholesterol
fatty acid
matrix vesicle
hydroxyapatite
osteogenesis
biomineralization
atherosclerosis
diabetes mellitus
renal insufficiency
nuclear magnetic resonance

Cited by (0)

This work was supported by the British Heart Foundation, the National Institute for Health Research, and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

[S]

The online version of this article (available at http://www.jlr.org) contains supplementary data in the form of nine figures.