Pericyte
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A type of mesenchymal cell which in aggregation forms a contractile wrapping around a capillary.
"Since 1873, when Rouget regarded pericytes as contractile elements (Rouget 1874), the discussion concerning this ability has never ceased. Pericytes are likely to respond to vasoactive molecules such as nitric oxide, prostacyclin, angiotensin II, and endothelin-1, because they express respective receptors (Dehouck et al., 1997, Chakravarthy and Gardiner, 1999, Healy and Wilk, 1993)."
Example
More examples"Since 1873, when Rouget regarded pericytes as contractile elements (Rouget 1874), the discussion concerning this ability has never ceased. Pericytes are likely to respond to vasoactive molecules such as nitric oxide, prostacyclin, angiotensin II, and endothelin-1, because they express respective receptors (Dehouck et al., 1997, Chakravarthy and Gardiner, 1999, Healy and Wilk, 1993)."
Etymology
From peri- + -cyte.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.