NON-ANDRENERGIC MECHANISMS OF CUTANEOUS VASOCONSTRICTION IN YOUNG & AGED SKIN

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. When a person is exposed to a cold environment, the body conserves heat by constricting blood vessels in the skin. This reduces the flow of warm blood through cold. However, aging impairs the ability of the skin's blood vessels to constrict. This causes older individuals to have a higher skin blood flow in the cold and makes them more vulnerable to heat loss. The purpose of this project is to examine the mechanisms responsible for vasoconstriction induced by local cooling of the skin. The project will also explore how aging affects those mechanisms. The goal of this study is to investigate whether a particular enzyme in the skin, Rho kinase, and reactive oxygen species (ROS) contribute to skin vasoconstriction in response to local skin cooling and how those contributions may change with aging. We hypothesize that 1) both ROS and Rho kinase contribute to vasoconstriction in young and older people, and 2) ROS and Rho kinase contribute to a greater portion of vasoconstriction in older people as a result of the aging process.