Effect of Stimulation on Phagocytic Activity of Vascular Endothelium.

Abstract

Opinion differs in regard to the ability of vascular endothelium to ingest particulate matter by phagocytosis. Maximow 1 regarded the phagocytic sinusoidal lining of such organs as the liver and spleen as a distinctive cell type consisting of flattened histiocytes quite different from the usual endothelium. Foot 2 now even suggests that the Kupffer cells of the liver may be monocytes anchored there. Gardner and Smith 3 failed to demonstrate any phagocytic activity of pulmonary endothelium. Seemann 4 also investigating the lung endothelium doubts its ability to phagocytose carbon. Lang 5 found carbon in the endothelium of granulation tissue but in quantity “incomparably smaller” than in the spleen and liver. India ink, as this investigator points out, becomes a rather coarse carbon suspension within the circulation. Although he speaks of the carbon being engulfed by the endothelium he does not regard the entrance of the coarse carbon particles into the endothelial cells as a phagocytic process. Finally he found that the endothelium transfers its carbon to extravascular pericytes (histiocytes) which are not of endothelial origin.

To test the phagocytic property of common endothelium, granulation tissue was produced by injecting into the groins and axillas of rabbits an alcohol-acetone mixture saturated with Sudan III.