Arterial Wall Stiffness and Atherogenesis in Human Coronaries
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2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. The present study hypothesized that local wall-strain stiffening phenomena might, in addition to low endothelial shear stress (ESS) and cyclic stretch, be a complementary factor in plaque location in coronary bifurcations. Patients with minimal coronary disease, having undergone both computer tomography and magnetic resonance imaging examinations, were enrolled for the study. Both computational fluid dynamics and structural analysis were performed. The effects of cardiac motion and blood pressure on spatial luminal arterial wall stretch (LWstretch), and stiffness (LWstiff) distributions in the left main coronary bifurcations, were investigated. No correlations were found between LWStiff, LWStretch, and ESS at lesion sites. However, results indicated that 89% of lesions were located at sites of low ESS (i.e., ESS<1Pa) and, more interestingly, also in specific regions of high LWStiff (LWStiff>300kPa). These findings underline the importance of arterial wall stiffness in the development of atherosclerosis.
