Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Arteries play an important role in regulating blood flow throughout the body. When blood flows through the artery, it rubs against the wall and creates a type of force that can trigger the release of factors that cause the artery to expand. Ultrasound machines can be used to measure how much an artery can expand, and the amount an artery can expand is important because it can help to predict cardiovascular disease risk. Because blood travels through the arteries with every heart beat, it produces shear stresses that can go in varying directions. In everyday life, we experience many things that can create different blood flow patterns through the arteries. For instance, running produces large amounts of blood flow both away from and towards the heart, while a leg kicking exercise only produces large amounts of blood flow away from the heart. These two types of exercise have been shown to produce different amounts of dilation in arteries as well. Currently in humans, the effects of different patterns of blood flow on artery function are not well understood. My study will investigate the changes in artery function in immediate response to various stimuli thought to produce different blood flow patterns through the artery. The three stimuli being used in my study are heating, cuff compressions, and handgrip exercise performed on or by the left arm. We believe that only cuff compressions and handgrip exercise, which should produce large changes in blood flow away and towards the heart, will show immediate improvements in artery function. The effect of blood flow and shear stress pattern is an important research question to investigate because of its potential to help us explain more complex questions that have real life applications, such as how different types of exercise can lead to different changes in artery function.