Effect of Circulating Extracellular Vesicles from Adults with Spinal Cord Injury on Pulmonary Artery Endothelial Cell Function

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is associated with an increased risk and prevalence of cardiopulmonary and cerebrovascular disease-related morbidity and mortality. Despite an improved understanding of the neurological and physical consequences associated with SCI, factors that initiate, promote and accelerate cardiopulmonary disease are poorly understood. It has become apparent that the increased incidence of pulmonary disorders in adults with chronic SCI is not solely due to worsening of traditional risk factors, but also involves ill-defined factors. Several studies have implicated circulating endothelial cell-derived microvesicles (EMVs) in the etiology of cardiopulmonary diseases. We have previously reported that circulating EMVs are elevated in adults with chronic SCI and the expression of their microRNA cargo promotes disease. Reduction in pulmonary nitric oxide (NO) bioavailability and increased endothelin (ET)-1 production underly many cardiopulmonary disorders associated with SCI. The experimental aim of this study was to determine the effect of EMVs isolated from adults with chronic tetraplegic SCI on pulmonary endothelial cell NO and ET-1 production. As part of an ongoing study, circulating EMVs (CD144-PE) were isolated (flow cytometry) from 7 non-injured adults (all male; age: 38±4 yr) and 7 motor complete SCI adults with tetraplegic SCI (male; 44±5 yr). All subjects were free of overt cardiometabolic disease. Human pulmonary artery endothelial cells (HPAECs) were cultured and separately treated with EMVs from each subject for 24 hr. Expression of intracellular NO and ET-1 proteins of interest was determined by capillary electrophoresis immunoassay. Circulating EMV concentrations were significantly higher (~200%) in SCI vs non-injured (154±36 vs 54±7 EMV/μL). Expression of p-eNOS (Ser1177), the primary activation site for eNOS, was ~30% lower (96.0±2.3 vs 140.7±8.9 AU; p<0.01) and p-eNOS (Thr495), primary inhibitory site, ~40% higher (40.7±1.7 vs 28.8±3.1 AU; p<0.01) in cells treated with EMVs from SCI vs non-injured. As a result, NO production was ~20% lower (6.5±0.3 vs 8.3±0.7 μmol/L; P=0.03) in HPAECs treated with EMVs from adults with SCI. SCI-associated EMVs also significantly increased (~70%) the expression of Big ET-1 (60.6±3.6 vs 36.1±2.7 AU) resulting in enhanced endothelial ET-1 production (884.0±22.9 vs 778.7±18.0 pg/mL). In conclusion, EMVs harvested from adults with SCI markedly reduced eNOS activation and NO production and increased ET-1 synthesis and release in pulmonary endothelial cells in vitro. Circulating EMVs represent a potential mechanistic factor underlying pulmonary disorders and increased disease risk with SCI. This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2024 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.