Date of Award
Spring 2021
Document Type
Open Access Dissertation
Department
Biomedical Engineering
First Advisor
Tarek M. Shazly
Abstract
Vascular endothelial cell dysfunction (ECD) is a disease characterized by the inability of the vascular endothelial cells to transmit signaling molecules, namely nitric oxide (NO), in response to changes in blood flow rate. This disease is shown to be incident in the onset of more severe vascular disease such as hypertension, atherosclerosis, and heart failure. Long-term ECD is shown to cause long-term remodeling such as decreased flow-mediated dilation, increased pulse-wave velocity, intimal-medial thickening, and increased wall stiffness due to collagen deposition. We used second harmonic generation (SHG) microscopy to analyze this change in the collagen microstructure of the arterial extracellular matrix due to decreased nitric oxide signaling. In the analysis of these microscopic images, we observed a significant increase in the relative frequency of circumferentially oriented collagen fibers with age in knockout mice with an expected decrease in NO signaling compared to their wild-type counterparts. Within these mouse arteries, we also observed a sharper decrease in the tortuosity of the circumferential fibers compared to the axial fibers. Overall, these results have implications toward studies in NO-dependent stress-mediated remodeling and future computational modeling efforts of ECD.
Rights
© 2021, Jeffrey Thomas Rodgers
Recommended Citation
Rodgers, J. T.(2021). Vascular Endothelial Dysfunction and Effects on Arterial Wall Microstructure. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/6230