Establishment of femoral artery stenosis model and evaluation of arteriography in mice

Objective The femoral artery of C57BL/6 ApoE-/- mice was ligated to make the model of hind-limb artery stenosis. Angiography was used to evaluate the stenosis rate of hind-limb artery in mice. Methods The ligated femoral arteries were divided into the experimental group and the contralateral femoral arteries were the control group. We exposed the right femoral artery in the operative field using blunt dissection technique, parallel placed the metal wire with femoral artery, used thread to bound the femoral artery and the metal wire, drawn out the metal wire after ligation, and then sutured the skin wound. The contralateral was dealt with the same method but not ligated. After 4 weeks of high fat diet, the mice were killed to expose their hearts, and the contrast medium was pushed from the left ventricle, then put into the X-ray imaging system of small animals for angiography. The bilateral femoral arteries were taken from the mice after angiography. Results There were 13 plaques in the experimental group and 4 in the control group. The angiography results showed that the femoral artery stenosis rate of 16-week-old C57BL/6 ApoE-/- mice model was measured to be (48.43±25.13)%, the theoretical stenosis rate was (45.63±9.96)%, F=7.956, P>0.05. The diameter of femoral artery was (0.97±0.11) mm. Conclusion The method of femoral artery ligation is a reliable method to the establishment of the model of hind-limb artery stenosis in C57BL/6 ApoE-/- mice and angiography is one of the methods to evaluate the rate of stenosis. Key words: Femoral artery stenosis; Model, animal; Angiography; Femoral artery plaque