capillary, microscopic blood vessel, smallest unit of the circulatory system. Capillaries form a network of tiny tubes throughout the body, connecting arterioles (smallest arteries) and venules (smallest veins). Through the thin capillary walls, which are composed of a single layer of cells, the nutritive material and oxygen in the blood pass into the body tissues, and waste matter and carbon dioxide in turn are absorbed from the tissues into the bloodstream.

Any of the minute blood vessels that form networks where the arterial and venous circulation (see artery, vein) meet for exchange of oxygen, nutrients, and wastes with body tissues. Capillaries are just large enough for red blood cells to pass through in single file. Their thin walls are semipermeable, allowing small molecules to pass through in both directions. The smallest lymphatic vessels and minute bile channels in the liver are also called capillaries.

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Capillaries are the smallest of a body's blood vessels, measuring 5-10 μm in diameter, which connect arterioles and venules, and enable the interchange of water, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and many other nutrient and waste chemical substances between blood and surrounding tissues.

Anatomy

Blood flows from the heart to arteries, which branch and narrow into arterioles, and then branch further still into capillaries. After the tissue has been perfused, capillaries join and widen to become venules and then widen more to become veins, which return blood to the heart.

The "capillary bed" is the network of capillaries supplying an organ. The more metabolically active the cells, the more capillaries it will require to supply nutrients and carry away waste products.

Metarterioles provide direct communication between arterioles and venules and are important in bypassing the bloodflow through the capillaries. True capillaries branch mainly from metarterioles and provide exchange between cells and the circulation. The internal diameter of 8 μm forces the red blood cells to partially fold into bullet-like shapes in order to by pass them in single file.

Precapillary sphincters are rings of smooth muscles at the origin of true capillaries that regulate blood flow into true capillaries and thus control blood flow through a tissue.

Types

Capillaries come in three types:

• Continuous - Continuous capillaries have a sealed endothelium and only allow small molecules, like water and ions to diffuse. Continuous capillaries can be further divided into two subtypes:

# Those with numerous transport vesicles and tight junctions that are primarily found in skeletal muscles, lungs, gonads, and skin.

# Those with few vesicles and tight junctions that are primarily found in the central nervous system.

• Fenestrated - Fenestrated capillaries (derived from "fenestra," the Latin word for "window") have pores in the the endothelial cells (60-80 nm in diameter) that are spanned by a diaphragm of radially oriented fibrils and allow small molecules and limited amounts of protein to diffuse. In the renal glomerulus there are larger fenestrae which have no diaphragms. Both types of fenestrated blood vessels have continuous basal lamina and are primarily located in the endocrine glands, intestines, pancreas and glomeruli of kidney.
• Sinusoidal - Sinusoidal or discontinuous capillaries are special fenestrated capillaries that have larger openings (30-40 μm in diameter) in the epithelium to allow red blood cells and serum proteins to enter, a process that is aided by a discontinuous basal lamina. These capillaries lack pinocytotic vesicles and gaps may be present in cell junctions permitting leakage between endothelial cells. Sinusoid blood vessels are primarily located in the liver, spleen, bone marrow, lymph nodes, and adrenal cortex.

Physiology

The capillary wall is a one-layer endothelium so thin that gas and molecules such as oxygen, water, proteins and lipids can pass through them driven by osmotic and hydrostatic gradients. Waste products such as carbon dioxide and urea can diffuse back into the blood to be carried away for removal from the body. The physics of this exhange is explained by the Starling equation.

The capillary bed usually carries no more than 25% of the amount of blood it could contain, although this amount can be increased through auto regulation by inducing relaxation of smooth muscle in the arterioles that lead to the capillary bed as well as constriction of the metarterioles.

The capillaries do not possess this smooth muscle in their own wall, and so any change in their diameter is passive. Any signaling molecules they release (such as endothelin for constriction and nitric oxide for dilation) act on the smooth muscle cells in the walls of nearby, larger vessels, e.g. arterioles.

Capillary permeability can be increased by the release of certain cytokines, such as in an immune response.

Immune response

In an immune response, the endothelial cells of the capillary will upregulate receptor molecules, thus it signals the need for an immune response by the site of infection and aids extravasion of these cells into the tissue.

History

Ibn al-Nafis theorized a "premonition of the capillary circulation in his assertion that the pulmonary vein receives what comes out of the pulmonary artery, this being the reason for the existence of perceptible passages between the two."

Marcello Malpighi was the first to observe and correctly describe capillaries when he discovered them in a frog's lung in 1661.

See also

• Alveolar-capillary barrier
• Blood brain barrier
• Capillary action
• Hagen-Poiseuille equation

References

External links