Abstract

Vascular Smooth Muscle: Metabolic, Ionic, and Contractile Mechanisms addresses the vascular smooth muscle function by describing plasma lipoprotein structure, synthesis, and transport in relation to the concepts of altered vascular smooth muscle lipid metabolism leading to the genesis of atherosclerotic disease.
This book is organized into six chapters and begins with an introduction to the complexities of energy metabolism and how metabolic events can be correlated with a simultaneous quantitative assessment of smooth muscle mechanics and the contractile machinery at the molecular level. The next two chapters offer the reader a view of smooth muscle membrane properties in terms of the distribution, transport, and metabolic control of electrolytes and specific aspects of ion conductance and electrical activity. This text also explains how smooth muscle cells regulate their contractile activity through regulation of calcium ion fluxes and the interaction, at the molecular level, of calcium ions with regulatory proteins associated with the contractile apparatus. Reference is made to the relation of possible anomalies in cellular or subcellular smooth muscle metabolic and/or ionic events to the bases of certain types of vascular disease. A chapter that examines the events leading to vascular pathology in the form of atherogenesis concludes the book.
This book is intended for researchers and clinicians engaged in the study of smooth muscle and related areas.