Morphometric study of skin vessels after mechanical injury based on labeling with antibodies to von Willebrand factor

AIM: using immunohistochemical reaction to antibodies to fW, to identify the dynamics of the number and size of skin vessels at different stages of regenerative histogenesis after mechanical injury. METHODS. An experimental single-center continuous controlled randomized unblinded study was conducted. The objects of the study were skin fragments of Wistar rats taken from the middle third of the thigh at different stages of healing after a deep cut wound. The animals were divided into 9 groups: 1st - intact individuals (control group, n = 3), the remaining groups correspond to the periods of withdrawal from the experiment (3 animals per group) at 12 hours, 24 hours, 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 10th, 15th and 25th days after mechanical injury. Histological preparations were prepared from skin biopsies for immunohistochemical studies using antibodies to the von Willebrand factor and subsequent morphometric processing of the obtained digital images. RESULTS. Blood vessels were visualized in the dermis and hypodermis of the rat skin and divided into 4 groups depending on their caliber (visible cross-sectional area). The most striking dynamics are demonstrated by the group of vessels with a cross-sectional area ≤100 μm2. Starting from the 2nd to the 10th day of the experiment, their number increases. The preparations of the 15th and 25th days of the experiment show a gradual decrease in the number of such vessels. Similar dynamics were found in the groups of medium (S = 100-500 μm2) and large (S = 500-1000 μm2) caliber vessels. Vessels with a cross-sectional area ≥ 1000 μm2 are single and it is not possible to talk about a correlation between the number of such vessels and the phase of the wound process. CONCLUSION. The immunohistochemical reaction using antibodies to fW on rat skin preparations is characterized by good reproducibility and allows obtaining high-quality preparations. In the experimental wound process, the method showed high selectivity for detecting blood vessels. As a result of morphometric processing of histological preparations, data were obtained confirming the relationship between the number of vessels and successive phases of the wound process.