Peripheral vascular control in humans

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Everyday human activity requires that the cardiovascular system constantly adjusts blood flow to exercising muscles while maintaining arterial blood pressure.  Accomplishing these goals requires the heart to adjust the amount of blood that it pumps into the blood vessels, and the blood vessels to widen or narrow to adjust how much blood flows to the muscle and to other tissue.  Muscle can increase its demand for blood flow far beyond that of any other organ system in the body, so exercise represents the single greatest challenge to the cardiovascular system.  My research program is therefore aimed at understanding how arterial and venous blood vessel widening and narrowing is controlled in exercise, and how it is affected by aging and exercise training.  In particular, my work has focussed on adjustments that occur when exercise starts or ends which determine how fast the blood vessels widen or narrow.  This is because human activity is characterized by continually changing levels of activity, so the speed with which the blood vessels respond becomes very important.  The specific objectives of my research program include identifying 1) mechanisms determining rapid widening or narrowing of arterial blood vessels in exercise 2) how the widening and narrowing of veins is controlled 3) the effects of training and aging.  We anticipate finding that veins in humans are subject to the same kind of control as arteries (little is known about control of veins in humans, and we are one of only a handful of laboratories equipped to find answers to this question).  We also anticipate finding that aging reduces the function of blood vessels when responding to exercise, but that this can be substantially restored through exercise training, highlighting the importance of being active for maintaining the function of our cardiovascular system.  This work will provide essential, novel information for advancing our understanding of blood vessel function and structure and the factors that influence it.  Such basic research provides the necessary basis for future investigations aimed at understanding how blood vessels might lose their function and therefore affect the health of an individual, and what can be done to prevent that.