ArticlePloS one2018
α-smooth muscle actin is not a marker of fibrogenic cell activity in skeletal muscle fibrosis.
Article in PloS one, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 36 papers.
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Who cites it
36 citing papers in PubMed, 68 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Role of capillary rarefaction in age-related changes of external urethral sphincter muscle of female mice.Cell and tissue research · 2025Article
- Detachable Microneedle Patch for Local Delivery of TGF-β Inhibitor to Suppress Scar Formation.ACS biomaterials science & engineering · 2025Article
- Rho-kinase inhibition reduces subretinal fibrosis.Cell death discovery · 2025Article
- Identification of pro-fibrotic cellular subpopulations in fascia of gluteal muscle contracture using single-cell RNA sequencing.Journal of translational medicine · 2025Article
- Spirotetrahydroisoquinoline-Based Histone Deacetylase Inhibitors as New Antifibrotic Agents: Biological Evaluation in Human Fibroblasts from Bronchoalveolar Lavages of Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis Patients.ACS pharmacology & translational science · 2025Article
- Talabostat, fibroblast activation protein inhibitor, attenuates inflammation and fibrosis in systemic sclerosis.Inflammopharmacology · 2024Article
- Potentials of Natural Antioxidants in Reducing Inflammation and Oxidative Stress in Chronic Kidney Disease.Antioxidants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Factors Affecting the Evaluation of Collagen Deposition and FibrosisTissue engineering. Part A · 2024Article
- Retinoic acid receptor α activity in proximal tubules prevents kidney injury and fibrosis.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Dual Glyoxalase-1 and β-Klotho Gene-Activated Scaffold Reduces Methylglyoxal and Reprograms Diabetic Adipose-Derived Stem Cells: Prospects in Improved Wound Healing.Pharmaceutics · 2024Article
- Structure Modification Converts the Hepatotoxic Tacrine into Novel Hepatoprotective Analogs.ACS omega · 2024Article
- Spatial Transcriptomic Profiling of Tetraspanins in Stage 4 Colon Cancer from Primary Tumor and Liver Metastasis.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Identification of Periostin as a critical niche for myofibroblast dynamics and fibrosis during tendon healing.Matrix biology : journal of the International Society for Matrix Biology · 2024Article
- Host microbiome associated low intestinal acetate correlates with progressive NLRP3-dependent hepatic-immunotoxicity in early life microcystin-LR exposure.BMC pharmacology & toxicology · 2023Article
- Heterogeneity of Phase II Enzyme Ligands on Controlling the Progression of Human Gastric Cancer Organoids as Stem Cell Therapy Model.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Article
- Effects of caloric restriction and ketogenic diet on renal fibrosis after ischemia/reperfusion injury.Heliyon · 2023Article
- Keloidal Collagen May Be Produced Directly by αSMA-positive Cells: Morphological Analysis and Protein Shotgun Analysis.Plastic and reconstructive surgery. Global open · 2023Article
- "Long COVID-19" and viral "fibromyalgia-ness": Suggesting a mechanistic role for fascial myofibroblasts (Nineveh, the shadow is in the fascia).Frontiers in medicine · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
α-Smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) is used as a marker for a subset of activated fibrogenic cells, myofibroblasts, which are regarded as important effector cells of tissue fibrogenesis. We address whether α-SMA-expressing myofibroblasts are detectable in fibrotic muscles of mdx5cv mice, a mouse model for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), and whether the α-SMA expression correlates with the fibrogenic function of intramuscular fibrogenic cells. α-SMA immunostaining signal was not detected in collagen I (GFP)-expressing cells in fibrotic muscles of ColI-GFP/mdx5cv mice, but it was readily detected in smooth muscle cells lining intramuscular blood vessel walls. α-SMA expression was detected by quantitative RT-PCR and Western blot in fibrogenic cells sorted from diaphragm and quadriceps muscles of the ColI-GFP/mdx5cv mice. Consistent with the more severe fibrosis in the ColI-GFP/mdx5cv diaphragm, the fibrogenic cells in the diaphragm exerted a stronger fibrogenic function than the fibrogenic cells in the quadriceps as gauged by their extracellular matrix gene expression. However, both gene and protein expression of α-SMA was lower in the diaphragm fibrogenic cells than in the quadriceps fibrogenic cells in the ColI-GFP/mdx5cv mice. We conclude that myofibroblasts are present in fibrotic skeletal muscles, but their expression of α-SMA is not detectable by immunostaining. The level of α-SMA expression by intramuscular fibrogenic cells does not correlate positively with the level of collagen gene expression or the severity of skeletal muscle fibrosis in the mdx5cv mice. α-SMA is not a functional marker of fibrogenic cells in skeletal muscle fibrosis associated with muscular dystrophy.
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