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RECEPTORS AND SIGNAL TRANSDUCTION
Department of Laboratory Medicine, Children's Hospital Boston, and Department of Pathology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts
Submitted 13 October 2006 ; accepted in final form 6 May 2007
Elevated plasma levels of cytokines such as endothelin-1 (ET-1) have been shown to be associated with sickle cell disease (SCD). However, the role of ET-1 in the pathophysiology of SCD is not entirely clear. I now show that treatment of SAD mice, a transgenic mouse model of SCD, with BQ-788 (0.33 mg·kg–1·day–1 intraperitoneally for 14 days), an ET-1 receptor B (ETB) antagonist, induced a significant decrease in Gardos channel activity (1.7 ± 0.1 to 1.0 ± 0.4 mmol·1013 cell–1·h–1, n = 3, P = 0.019) and reduced the erythrocyte density profile by decreasing the mean density (D50; n = 4, P = 0.012). These effects were not observed in mice treated with BQ-123, an ET-1 receptor A (ETA) antagonist. A mixture of both antagonists induced a similar change in density profile as with BQ-788 alone that was associated with an increase in mean cellular volume and a decrease in corpuscular hemoglobin concentration mean. I also observed in vitro effects of ET-1 on human sickle erythrocyte dehydration that was blocked by BQ-788 and a mixture of ETB/ETA antagonists but not by ETA antagonist alone. These results show that erythrocyte hydration status in vivo is mediated via activation of the ETB receptor, leading to Gardos channel modulation in SCD.
cellular dehydration; Gardos channel; transgenic sickle mice
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