Regulatory mechanisms of arterial compliance and blood flow in humans

我们大多数人都意识到，我们的心脏和血管在运输血液到我们身体的所有组织中起着重要的作用。 血管不仅仅是运输血液的静态管道。 因为我们是直立行走的，所以对人体心血管系统的一个挑战是不断适应身体组织对血液流动的不同要求。这些流量变化主要取决于组织能量需求的变化;例如，骨骼肌可以在运动开始后的几秒钟内改变其对能量的需求多达100倍，因此需要血液流量的急剧和几乎即时的增加来支持增加的能量消耗。我们血管的结构和功能可以适应它们所面临的挑战，并且可以在健康和疾病中发生显着变化。 我们的动脉（将血液从心脏输送出去的血管）的两个重要特征是它们有多灵活（僵硬），以及当面临流量增加的挑战时，它们可以扩张（扩张）多少。 我们知道这两个特征，僵硬和扩张，随着疾病过程，衰老和一些锻炼计划而变化，但我们对调节这些变化的因素知之甚少，特别是在人类中。 在我的实验室里，我们一直在研究运动在改变动脉结构和功能中的作用，运动会刺激动脉的大压力和流量。 我们也有兴趣研究任何变化对血液运输到骨骼肌组织的影响。我们整合了心血管系统的各种组成部分对运动挑战的反应，以确定控制机制。我们继续的研究将集中在使用新的超声技术来检查血管硬度和血流在微观水平上的变化。 从这些研究中获得的见解将有助于推进目前对心血管系统的基础知识，并将在健康和疾病状态下应用。

Most of us realize that our heart and blood vessels play an important role in transporting blood to and from all of the tissues of our body.  Blood vessels are much more than static tubes for transporting blood.  A challenge to the human cardiovascular system, because we stand upright, is to continually adapt to the differing requirements for blood flow by the body's tissues. These flow changes are mostly dictated by changes in the energy demands of tissues; for example, skeletal muscle can changing its demand for energy as much as 100-fold within seconds of the onset of exercise and thus requires a drastic and almost instant increase in blood flow to support the increased energy consumption. The structure and function of our blood vessels can adapt to challenges they are presented with and can change significantly in both health and disease.  Two important features of our arteries (blood vessels which transport blood away from the heart) are how flexible (stiffness) they are and how much they can expand (dilate) when faced with the challenges of increasing flow.  We know that these two features, stiffness and dilation, change with disease processes, aging and some exercise programs but we know very little about what regulates these changes, particular in humans.  In my laboratory we have been studying the role that exercise, which stimulates large pressure and flow challenges to the arteries, plays in changing arterial structure and function.  We are also interested in examining the impact of any changes on the transport of blood to skeletal muscle tissue. We integrate the responses of a variety of components of the cardiovascular system to exercise challenges in order to determine control mechanisms. Our continuing studies will focus on the use of new ultrasound technology to examine blood vessel stiffness and changes in blood flow at the microscopic level.  The insight gained from these studies will assist in advancing the current basic knowledge of the cardiovascular system and will have applications in healthy and diseased states.