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LOX-1: luring ox-LDL into the arterial wall.

The current issue of the Journal of Hypertension features an interesting experimental study by Nakano et al. [1] on the role of the lectin-like oxidized low-density lipoprotein (LDL) receptor (LOX-1) in early atherogenesis. LOX-1 is a receptor for oxidized LDL (ox-LDL) which is present on several types of cells in the vascular wall including endothelium, smooth muscle cells, and inflammatory cells [2]. Ox-LDL is a major pathological factor in early atherosclerotic lesion development [3,4]. To study the role of LOX-1, Nakano et al. used an animal model of combined hypertension and dislipidemia by feeding a high-fat diet to stroke-prone spontaneously hypertensive rats and assessing the lesions occurring in the mesenteric arteries. In the hypertensive rats, LOX-1 expression was found to be upregulated in the vascular wall (in line with previous studies [5]), and was associated with local accumulation of oxLDL. Inhibition of LOX-1 by treatment with an antiLOX-1 antibody attenuated arterial lipid deposition, supporting a regulatory role for LOX-1 in this process. Two important observations in this study help explain how.