Unexpected!

"Smell" seems to be the patent of the nose, but in recent years, studies have found that it is not only the epidermal cells of the nasal cavity that have olfactory receptors

Now, a new study published in Science links olfactory receptors in arteries to cardiovascular disease: On the walls of blood vessels, macrophage olfactory receptors "smell" the odorant molecule octanal and then Causes an inflammatory response that can lead to heart disease and atherosclerosis

To our noses, octanal is a molecule with a distinct smell

Octanal is a product of fatty acid peroxidation in the arterial wall under conditions of oxidative stress.

In the past two years of research, scientists at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology have successively found that macrophages in the blood vessel wall also contain some olfactory receptors that can "smell" molecules; and the presence of the olfactory receptor OR6A2 makes the These macrophages can "smell" octanal

To examine how octanal ultimately affects the risk of cardiovascular disease, the team injected octanal into the blood of normal mice and into the blood of gene-edited mice that had deleted the gene for the Olfr2 receptor, the human equivalent of OR6A2

Subsequent studies further revealed the cause of the inflammatory response: when the Olfr2 receptor "smells" octanal, it induces activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome, which in turn produces more pro-inflammatory cytokines, interleukin-1β , accelerates atherosclerosis

▲ The mechanism by which Olfr2 receptors ultimately accelerate atherosclerosis (Image source: Reference [2])

At the same time, the discovery of this signaling pathway also provides scientists with new ideas for inhibiting and reversing arterial damage

The research team used citral, a lemon-flavored molecule that blocks olfactory receptors in mice

The researchers believe that this process may also be achieved in humans, thereby blocking the OR6A2 receptor

For these scientists, the study found more than just a potential avenue for cardiovascular disease prevention

Note: The original text has been deleted

References:

[1] Marco Orecchioni et al.

[2] Katey J.

[3] Macrophages in the artery wall 'smell' their surroundings.