Detection of Circulating Endothelial Cells in Thrombotic Thrombocytopenic Purpura

Circulating endothelial cells as a marker of ongoing vascular disease in systemic sclerosis

“…However, the amount of CECs detectable in peripheral blood has been recently proposed as a reliable marker of endothelial damage in different vascular diseases, such as acute coronary syndrome (also after coronary angioplasty), sickle cell anemia, thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, rickettsial and cytomegalovirus infections, Behçet's disease, SLE, and small-vessel vasculitides (7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15). Thus, the detection of CECs in patients with SSc is certainly not surprising, because results of several histologic studies of dermal microvas- culature in this disease, which demonstrated disruption of the normal architecture of the endothelium with loss of intercellular junctions and progressive death of endothelial cells (3)(4)(5)(6), have suggested that endothelium may play a key role in the pathologic process of SSc.…”

“…In humans, CECs have been detected in diverse conditions having in common endothelial damage, such as coronary angioplasty, acute coronary syndrome, sickle cell anemia, thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, infection with Rickettsia conorii or cytomegalovirus, Behçet's disease, systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), and small-vessel vasculitis (7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15). Moreover, it has been suggested that in response to severe ischemia or cytokine stimuli, circulating endothelial cell progenitors (CEPs) increase and home into sites of angiogenesis and/or vascular damage, and consequently contribute to neovascularization and/or wound-healing processes (16)(17)(18).…”

Circulating Endothelial Cells: Realities and Promises in Vascular Disorders

“…Coronary angioplasty [17,19] Acute coronary syndromes [20] Sickle cell anaemia [21] Pulmonary hypertension [22] Peripheral vascular disease [23,42] Haematological and infectious disease Rickettsial infection [24] Cytomegalovirus infection [18,25] Septic shock [26] Immune injury Thrombotic thrombocytopenia [27] Behcet's disease [28] Systemic lupus erythematosus [29] Inflammatory vasculitis [31] Kawasaki disease [32,39] Transplantation Bone marrow transplantation [35,44] Renal transplantation [32][33][34] Cancer Breast cancer, lymphoma [36] 6-10 7.5 13. [19,20], a technique now widely adopted in a wide variety of conditions.…”

Mitomycin- and calcineurin-associated HUS, endothelial dysfunction and endothelial repair: a new paradigm for the puzzle?

“…Second, consistent with the idea that drug-induced HUS is a disease of the endothelium, the CEC number was increased by 4-fold in Ms Y at the time of diagnosis and decreased as the disease seemed to improve. CECs have previously been demonstrated to be markedly increased in conditions associated with endothelial cell injury, such as myocardial infarction [5] and thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura [6].…”