Co-Cultivation of Human Aortic Smooth Muscle Cells With Epicardial Adipocytes Affects Their Proliferation Rate

The abnormal proliferation of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMC) is thought to play a role in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. Adipocytes produce several bioactive paracrine substances that can affect the growth and migration of VSMCs. Our study focuses on the direct effect of the bioactive substances in conditioned media (CM) that was obtained by incubation with primary adipocyte-derived cell lines, including cell lines derived from both preadipocytes and from more mature cells, on the proliferation rate of human aortic smooth muscle cells (HAoSMCs). We used a Luminex assay to measure the adipokine content of the CM and showed that there was a higher concentration of monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 in renal preadipocyte-CM compared with the HAoSMC control (p<0.5). The addition of both renal preadipocyte- and epicardial adipocyte- CM resulted in the elevated production of vascular endothelial growth factor compared with the control HASoSMC CM (p<0.001). The adiponectin content in renal adipocyte-CM was increased compared to all the remaining adipocyte-CM (p<0.01). Moreover, the results showed a higher proliferation rate of HAoSMCs after co-culture with epicardial adipocyte-CM compared to the HAoSMC control (p<0.05). These results suggest that bioactive substances produced by adipocytes have a stimulatory effect on the proliferation of VSMCs.