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Department of Surgery and Pediatrics, Brigham and Womens Hospital, and Department of Plastic Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115
| Abstract |
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| Introduction |
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Both wild-type mice (C57BL/6) treated with sCR1, an inhibitor of the major complement protein C3, and C3 knockout mice, after lower extremity reperfusion injury, demonstrate attenuated vascular permeability, histological muscle injury, and mast cell degranulation (2, 3). The activation of complement that produces C3 cleavage proceeds via Factor B of the alternative pathway or via C4 of the classical and mannose binding lectin (MBL)3 pathways. C4 knockout mice, deficient in both the classical and MBL pathways, demonstrate as much attenuation of injury parameters after hind limb ischemia-reperfusion (HLIR) as do C3 knockout mice. Thus, permeability, cytotoxicity, and mast cell degranulation are also dependent on the classical and/or lectin pathways.
The classical pathway of complement is activated by Ab binding to target Ags, followed by C1q binding to the Ab leading to C4 cleavage. MBL, conversely, is believed to be initiated on cell surfaces rich in N-acetylglucosamine and mannose residues in microbial rather than mammalian cells. MBL shares significant homology with the C1q subunit of C1, whereas MBL-associated serine protease (MASP)-2 and MASP-3 are homologous to C1r and C1s, respectively. The three MASPs (MASP-1, MASP-2, and MASP-3) form complexes with MBL in circulation and can activate complement (4). Recently, M-ficolin, L-ficolin, and H-ficolin have also been found to form complexes with MASPs to activate complement, similar to MBL (5). For instance, ficolin-A binding to MASP-2 initiates the complement cascade in mice independent of MBL (6). In humans, MBL is encoded by a single gene, whereas in rodents, MBL is encoded by genes mbl1 and mbl2 (7).
The demonstration that RAG knockout mice deficient in Ab produces attenuated injury subsequent to muscle reperfusion has led to the hypothesis that C1q and the classical pathways are the relevant pathways involved in complement activation. This hypothesis was strengthened by the finding that endogenous IgM was a critical element in the initiation of reperfusion injury (2). However, recent work by others has indicated that reperfusion injury could partially result from activation of the MBL pathway (8, 9). In this study, we have re-examined the Ab dependency hypothesis using MBL-deficient and C1q-deficient mice. Our results indicate that there are significant differences in the contribution of MBL and classical pathways to the pathogenesis of reperfusion injury.
| Materials and Methods |
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Male C57BL/6 mice (Taconic Farms) were used as parental strain controls (wild-type) in all experiments. C1q/ mice were bred in the laboratory of Dr. M. Carroll (Center for Blood Research, Boston, MA) as previously described by Botto et al. (10). MBL A/C/ mice were produced in our laboratory as previously described (7), on a mixed C57BL/6 x 129 background and backcrossed into C57BL/6 for seven generations. The backgrounds of these mice were verified using microsatellite analysis.
Mice were maintained in accordance with the guidelines of the Harvard Medical School Committee on Animals and of the Committee on the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the Institute of Laboratory Animal Resources, National Research Council as found in Department of Health, Education and Human Services, Publication no. 8523 (National Institutes of Health).
Animal experiments
Mice (2530 g), ages 68 wk, were anesthetized by i.p. injection of pentobarbital (60 mg/kg) and subjected to 2 h of hind limb ischemia followed by 3 h of reperfusion. Longer periods of ischemia resulted in increased mortality. Hind limbs were elevated for 2 min before the initiation of ischemia. After which, a tourniquet was applied above the greater trochanter using bilateral double rubber bands (Latex O-rings) from the McGivney Hemorrhoid Ligator kit (Miltex). Control mice did not undergo banding. Mice were maintained in a supine position and kept anesthetized throughout the course of the experiment. At the end of the experiment, mice were sacrificed by pentobarbital (120 mg/kg) injection and their hind limbs and lungs were harvested.
Reconstitution of the MBL-deficient mice was performed 1 h before the initiation of ischemia by injecting 75 µg of recombinant human (rh)MBL into the tail vein (11).
Permeability studies
Five minutes before tourniquet release, animals were reperfused with 1 µCi of 125I-labeled human albumin (ICN Pharmaceuticals) in 0.3 ml of normal saline via tail vein injection. Three hours after reperfusion, blood was aspirated from the right ventricle of the mice, and gamma radioactivity in the blood was quantitated by liquid scintillation counting (Packard Instrument). Muscle was harvested from both hind limbs, its radioactivity measured by liquid scintillation counting, and then dried to a constant weight in a gravity convection oven (Precision Scientific Group) at 100°C for two nights. The vascular permeability index, which represents extravasation of 125I-albumin, was determined as the ratio of radioactivity per gram of dry muscle to radioactivity per gram of blood.
Pathological processing
Muscle and lung sections were fixed in 4% paraformaldehyde in PBS for 18 h followed by incubation in JB-4 glycolmethacrylate overnight. Sections were then stained with Massons Trichrome for histological assessment of muscle fiber integrity. Fifty individual muscle fibers were counted in each histological section and the extent of injury was expressed as the number of damaged fibers divided by 50 and averaged over 5 fields per animal in blinded counts by a pathologist. The final injury score is presented as the average of the number of animals used in the experiment, with its corresponding SE. Lungs were stained with chloroacetate esterase for the assessment of pulmonary neutrophils. Quantification of lung injury was performed by counting the number of pulmonary neutrophils per high-power field (magnification, x40) for 5 fields per animal in a blinded test by a pathologist.
To identify mast cells, tissue sections were incubated with chloroacetate esterase, which stains protease/proteoglycan macromolecular complexes bright red. Both macromolecular complexes found within granules in mast cells as well as those found extracellularly from degranulated mast cells are stained in this assay. A section through an intact mast cell normally contains over 75 secretory granules. When three or more secretory granules were found outside the cell, the cell was considered degranulated. We had previously noted that degranulation was usually limited to mast cells within injured skeletal muscle bundles (3).
Immunohistochemistry
Sections for immunohistochemical studies were prepared from the gastrocnemius muscle. The muscle was embedded in paraffin before sectioning. Sections were heated at 60°C for 1 h before deparaffinization and hydration. Sodium citrate 10 mM (pH 6.0) was then added to the sections and heated to 100°C for 10 min for Ag retrieval.
For IgM staining, sections were blocked in 1.5% horse serum for 1 h and incubated in biotinylated goat anti-mouse IgM (1/25 dilution; The Jackson Laboratory) for 1 h, and developed with peroxidase-conjugated avidin-biotin complex using diaminobenzidine as a substrate (Vectorstain ABC; Vector Laboratories).
For C3 staining, sections were blocked with 5% rabbit serum and incubated overnight at 4°C with 1 µg/ml goat anti-mouse C3 (a gift from L. Kobzik, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA). Peroxidase-conjugated rabbit anti-goat IgG (1/50 dilution) was then added and incubated further for an hour. Immunoreactivity was visualized directly by peroxidase assay using diaminobenzidine as a substrate or after enhancement of signal with goat peroxidase-antiperoxidase (Sternberger Monoclonals) and using diaminobenzidine as a substrate. To control for nonspecific secondary Ab binding, primary Ab was omitted from control sections.
Statistical analyses
Results are presented as the mean ± SE. Comparisons between groups were performed by one-way ANOVA, and when significant difference was found, Students t test with the Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons was applied.
| Results |
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Mice deficient in MBL exhibited significant protection from muscle necrosis after HLIR. In these mice, the majority of muscle fibers were intact, as opposed to widespread muscle fiber disruption seen in C57BL/6 mice subjected to the same injury (Fig. 1). Quantitative assessment of muscle injury in cross-sections (Fig. 2) revealed that MBL-deficient mice (n = 9) had a significantly lower number of injured fibers (8.9 ± 1.2 injured fibers/50 counted) compared with C57BL/6 mice (n = 12) (24 ± 2.6 injured fibers/50 counted) (p < 0.05). This protection is reverted to normal injury levels in MBL-deficient mice reconstituted with rhMBL (n = 8) before the beginning of the experiment (28 ± 3.3 injured fibers/50 counted). Human MBL has been previously shown to reproduce the MBL phenotype in MBL-deficient mice (12). In contrast to MBL-deficient mice, C1q-deficient mice (n = 6) had similar injury (27 ± 3.2 injured fibers/50 counted) to that seen in C57BL/6 mice.
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When permeability edema was used as the measure of injury, C57BL/6 mice had a significant increase in permeability (1.2 ± 0.1) over uninjured controls (0.11). Interestingly, MBL-deficient mice also displayed a similar increase in permeability (1.2 ± 0.2) over uninjured controls (0.27). Although increased tissue permeability has been previously shown to have a direct correlation with muscle cytotoxicity, MBL-deficient mice did not exhibit this relationship (Fig. 3). MBL-deficient mice instead had increased tissue permeability without histological muscle injury. This increases permeability was also evident by the presence of enlarged muscle fibers and widened intercellular spaces in MBL-deficient mice after ischemia-reperfusion compared with uninjured mice (Fig. 4).
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After HLIR injury, MBL-deficient mice demonstrated sequestration of neutrophils in the lungs similar to C57BL/6 mice, but different from C1q-deficient mice (Fig. 5). When the number of pulmonary neutrophils was determined as a measure of remote lung injury, C57BL/6 mice had a significant increase in pulmonary neutrophils (12 ± 1.3) over uninjured controls (6.1 ± 1.4) (p < 0.05). MBL-deficient mice as well as MBL-deficient mice reconstituted with rhMBL showed no attenuation of pulmonary neutrophil accumulation, with 15 ± 0.9 and 16 ± 3.2 neutrophils, respectively, compared with C57BL/6 mice. The lack of protection against remote pulmonary injury is particularly notable in the setting of protection against local muscle disruption. In contrast, classical pathway-deficient mice (C1q knockouts) showed significant attenuation of pulmonary neutrophil accumulation (4.5 ± 0.53) compared with C57BL/6 mice (p < 0.05) (Fig. 6).
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MBL-deficient mice after HLIR demonstrated IgM and C3 levels on muscle fibers that were similar to those found in MBL-sufficient C57BL/6 mice, suggesting an activated classical complement pathway despite a lack of histological injury (Fig. 7).
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We have previously shown that tissue mast cells degranulate following HLIR (3). In the present study, C57BL/6 mice had a greater number of intact mast cells before HLIR (18 ± 0.7) vs after HLIR (12 ± 2.4) (p = 0.12). This translates to a 33% rate of degranulation after HLIR. Similarly, there were more intact mast cells among MBL-deficient mice before reperfusion (22 ± 1.8) vs after reperfusion (16 ± 2.2) (p = 0.09), representing a 27% rate of degranulation.
| Discussion |
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We observed a lack of protection against cytotoxic muscle injury in C1q-deficient mice compared with protection against cytotoxicity seen in MBL-deficient mice (Figs. 1 and 2). Restoration of cytotoxic injury in MBL-deficient mice after reconstitution with rhMBL suggests that activation of the MBL pathway is both necessary and sufficient in the development of local cytotoxic injury. Our results are concordant with those published recently by the Stahl group (8, 9) using murine models of gastrointestinal and cardiac ischemia-reperfusion. Taken together, these findings suggest that the activation of the MBL pathway plays a key role in mediating the cytotoxic effects of reperfusion injury.
Another characteristic feature of reperfusion injury is the development of local vascular injury, demonstrated most commonly by increased vascular permeability in the zone of injury. In our experiments, vascular injury appears to be mediated by the classical pathway and not the MBL pathway. MBL-deficient mice, with an intact classical pathway, demonstrated an increased vascular permeability that was also seen in C57BL/6 mice after reperfusion injury. Vascular leakage, however, was not observed in C1q-deficient mice subjected to the same injury (Fig. 4). In fact, the general relationship between increasing muscle fiber necrosis and increasing muscle edema was not seen in MBL-deficient mice (Fig. 3). This permeability is unlike the combined cytotoxic and vascular protection afforded by C3-, C4-, and (RAG/) Ab-deficient mice (2). This result may indicate that the MBL-dependent pathway directs C4 and C4 deposition to the muscle bundles and that C1q-dependent pathway directs deposition to the vascular endothelium. In addition, the protection against both cytotoxic and vascular injury afforded by Ab deficiency may indicate that the MBL pathway is activated by Ab deposition on ischemic muscle bundles, whereas the C1q pathway is activated by Ab deposition on injured vascular endothelium.
A final characteristic of reperfusion injury is remote pulmonary injury (15). This systemic aspect of a major local injury is most commonly measured as increased extravasation of intravascular markers into bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (14), a technique that is difficult to perform reproducibly in mice. The generally accepted sequence of remote pulmonary injury is the activation of both neutrophils and pulmonary endothelium leading to leukocyte adherence and extravasation in the lungs (16). We have used the early accumulation of neutrophils in the lung, determined histologically, as an indicator of remote injury in this study. After HLIR, MBL-deficient mice and C57BL/6 mice demonstrated a similar degree of increased pulmonary neutrophil accumulation. C1q-deficient mice did not show this remote response to local reperfusion injury (Figs. 5 and 6). To the extent that remote injury must reflect neutrophil activators being released into the circulation or neutrophil-activating surfaces being exposed at the site of injury, it is not surprising that C1q-deficient mice, which appeared protected from the vascular component of reperfusion injury, also did not exhibit intravascular remote pulmonary injury.
A more recently described feature of reperfusion injury is local mast cell degranulation (3). Mast cell degranulation, initiated after reperfusion, is not observed in C3- or C4-deficient mice. This suggests that mediators released from complement activation are likely initiators of mast cell degranulation. Furthermore, disruption of muscle fibers after HLIR is not seen in complement-sufficient, mast cell-deficient mice and in mice lacking a mast cell granule enzyme that is similar to human elastase (3). Thus, tissue necrosis after HLIR is dependent on mast cell constituents as well as on the MBL pathway of complement activation. However, as both C57BL/6 mice and MBL-deficient mice demonstrated mast cell degranulation after HLIR, the C1q-dependent pathway is also likely to contribute to mast cell degranulation.
On longitudinal sections, muscle fiber injury after HLIR was observed as multiple points of disruption on single fibers. On cross-sections, injury was observed in patches within a given muscle. Additionally, only a minority of the fibers was injured and intact fibers were found adjacent to disrupted fibers in a random distribution. Our group has previously reported that this pattern of injury is associated with the type of myosin within a particular muscle fiber (17) and that disruptive injury in this model is limited exclusively to fibers containing Fast Twitch myosin (Type IIB fibers). In addition, deposition of C3 and IgM is also limited to these fibers and occurs with reperfusion (not ischemia) and before disruption begins (18). Fig. 7 shows IgM and C3 deposition on injured gastrocnemius muscle (that has a relatively high content of Type IIB fibers) by immunoperoxidase staining. Both C57BL/6 and MBL-deficient mice had equivalent numbers of fibers with IgM deposition, but MBL-deficient mice had fewer fibers with C3 deposition. This again indicates the possible dependency of muscle injury on the MBL pathway. The residual C3 complement activation in MBL-deficient mice might be accounted for by associations of ficolins with MASPs in an MBL-independent manner.
IgM is believed to play a pivotal role as an early effector of the ischemia-reperfusion cascade. In Ab-deficient RAG1/ mice and Ab-defective cr2/ mice, ischemia-reperfusion injury is attenuated (19, 20, 21), but is restored to wild-type level after i.v. administration of IgM (22, 23). Moreover, blockade of IgM with peptide antagonists also attenuates this injury (23). Based on these data and on our current findings, we hypothesize the following sequence of events to occur after ischemia-reperfusion injury. Ischemia induces expression of antigenic epitopes on the endothelium and on specific muscle fibers. IgM binding to epitopes on the endothelium activates complement via C1q resulting in vascular leakage and intravascular neutrophil activation. IgM binding to epitopes on reperfused muscle bundles activates complement via the MBL pathway leading to mast cell degranulation and necrosis of susceptible muscle fiber types. The activation of complement by C1q binding to bound IgM has been previously demonstrated (24). In contrast, binding of MBL to bound IgM to activate complement has not yet been demonstrated. However, there is indirect evidence for this association. Firstly, MBL shares significant structural similarities to C1q. Secondly, MBL-agarose columns are well known for their use in IgM purification (25). It is therefore plausible that IgM is a common initiator of both the classical and MBL pathways.
Our results demonstrate for the first time that an increase in permeability after reperfusion injury can occur in the absence of histological muscle injury. Histological injury implies muscle necrosis, breakdown of muscle fibers, degradation of intracellular protein, and breakdown of the muscle plasma membrane. Permeability, in contrast, implies an endothelial injury, with loss of integrity of the endothelial basement membrane and intracellular tight junctions. Therefore, specific injury to the muscle or the endothelial compartment will lead to divergent pathophysiological events. The reason for the preferential activation of the classical pathway in the endothelial compartment and the MBL pathway in the muscle compartment is unclear. The implications of this finding, though, are clear. Effective therapy to prevent reperfusion injury must address blockade of the classical as well as the MBL pathways.
| Disclosures |
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| Footnotes |
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1 This work was supported by U.S. Public Health Service Grant P50 GM52585. This work contains data that were presented at the Surgical Forum in the 2004 Annual Congress of the American College of Surgeons. ![]()
2 Address correspondence and reprint requests to Dr. William G. Austen, Jr., Department of Plastic Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital, 10 Fruit Street, Boston, MA 02115. E-mail address: wausten{at}partners.org ![]()
3 Abbreviations used in this paper: MBL, mannose-binding lectin; rhMBL, recombinant human MBL; HLIR, hind limb ischemia-reperfusion; MASP, MBL-associated serine protease. ![]()
Received for publication February 21, 2006. Accepted for publication September 13, 2006.
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