The carotid artery wall moves longitudinally along the length of the vessel, although little is known about what causes this motion, or what health information it represents. The overarching purpose of this dissertation was to investigate the regulation of carotid artery longitudinal wall motion (CALM) in humans, as well as how CALM can be used to infer information about arterial health. Through observational and experimental designs, we tested evidence for a structural ventricular-vascular coupling effect, which postulates that systolic anterograde CALM is influenced by the forward blood shear rate while systolic retrograde CALM is influenced by left ventricular rotation, although the data suggests a moderate influence of left ventricular rotation, and minimal influence of shear rate. In cross-sectional analyses, we demonstrated that diastolic CALM variables are better related to age and health status compared to systolic CALM displacement and that this relationship was independent of traditional measures of arterial stiffness. These experimental and observational results directed the use of diastolic CALM as a potential indicator of arterial health in subsequent studies, due to the relative independence from systolic events. While there was no effect of 12-weeks of exercise training in healthy men on diastolic CALM variables, we observed increased systolic retrograde CALM and diastolic CALM acceleration in men with a history of resistance exercise training compared to sedentary men, suggesting an effect of habitual exercise training. Our novel findings suggest that CALM is regulated by a complex system, in part related to both arterial wall structure and ventricular-vascular coupling, and may have clinical value in complimenting measures of traditional arterial stiffness in humans. Future studies should examine whether local changes to arterial wall structure or indirect changes in regulatory control dictate differences in CALM with aging and with chronic exercise training, before integrating CALM into routine measurement of arterial health. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / We have known for a long time that arteries expand in order to absorb pressure; however, only recently have we identified that arteries also move longitudinally along the length of the arterial wall. The overarching purpose of this dissertation was to study what causes carotid artery longitudinal wall motion (CALM), and how we can use this information to understand arterial health. We demonstrated that CALM is partly controlled through the forward blood velocity wave and left ventricular rotation of the heart, and that diastolic CALM is uniquely related to aging and health status, but is not impacted by exercise training in healthy men. There are many aspects of CALM that need to be examined before wide-spread use, though our results indicate that CALM represents a new way of studying arterial health, which has the potential to complement traditional measures of cardiovascular disease risk in humans.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/21997 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Au, Jason S |
| Contributors | MacDonald, Maureen J, Kinesiology |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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