Everything about Fatty Streaks totally explained
Fatty streak, though composed of macrophage white blood cells, not fat, is the term generally given to the earliest stages of
atheroma, as viewed at autopsy, looking at the inner surface of
arteries, without magnification. It isn't visible by current technologies in living humans, even by
IVUS, the imaging technology with the highest spatial resolution for visualizing
artery walls
in vivo.
The fatty streak is the first grossly visible lesion in the development of
atherosclerosis. It appears as an irregular off white to yellow-white discoloration near the luminal surface of the artery. Actually the streaks are not fat, but small collections of
monocyte-derived
macrophages located beneath the inner,
endothelial layer of
arteries. The fatty streak mainly consists of foamy appearing macrophage cells, sometimes with some additional
T lymphocytes, aggregated
platelets, localized smooth muscle cells, etc.
The
macrophage cells, under a microscope, have a foamy-like appearance because of large collections of membrane bound vesicles within their cytoplasm. Since cholesterol within cells resides primarily within the cell membranes, the large accumulation of membranes results in an elevated local content of membrane bound
cholesterol and other fats.
En-mass the foamy macrophages usually have an off white to yellow-white color and were named because they were thought to "look like" "streaks of fat" against the otherwise quite red/pink muscular tissue background forming the wall of
arteries.
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