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Updated: Aug 18, 2026

Isolation of Primary Patient-specific Aortic Smooth Muscle Cells and Semiquantitative Real-time Contraction Measurements In Vitro
Published on: February 15, 2022
Progesterone receptor subtypes in vascular smooth muscle cells of human aorta
Yasuhiro Nakamura1, Takashi Suzuki, Tsukasa Inoue
1Department of Pathology, Tohoku University School of Medicine, Seiryomachi, Sendai, Japan.
Abstract:
Progesterone is involved in various functions of the cardiovascular system, including those of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) via progesterone receptor (PR). Progesterone has also been postulated to be involved in inhibition of VSMC proliferation via PR. However, the details of PR expression have remained largely unknown in human cardiovascular VSMCs. Therefore, we first examined the relative levels of PR isoform (PR-A and PR-B) expression in VSMCs, using both immunohistochemistry and quantitative RT-PCR analysis. PR-B was equally expressed between male and female aorta, but PR-A was more abundant in female than in male aorta. This finding demonstrated that the status of PR subtype expression was associated with the difference of genders.
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