Coronary artery wall shear stress is associated with progression and transformation of atherosclerotic plaque and arterial remodeling in patients with coronary artery disease. Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • BACKGROUND: Experimental studies suggest that low wall shear stress (WSS) promotes plaque development and high WSS is associated with plaque destabilization. We hypothesized that low-WSS segments in patients with coronary artery disease develop plaque progression and high-WSS segments develop necrotic core progression with fibrous tissue regression. METHODS AND RESULTS: Twenty patients with coronary artery disease underwent baseline and 6-month radiofrequency intravascular ultrasound (virtual histology intravascular ultrasound) and computational fluid dynamics modeling for WSS calculation. For each virtual histology intravascular ultrasound segment (n=2249), changes in plaque area, virtual histology intravascular ultrasound-derived plaque composition, and remodeling were compared in low-, intermediate-, and high-WSS categories. Compared with intermediate-WSS segments, low-WSS segments developed progression of plaque area (P=0.027) and necrotic core (P<0.001), whereas high-WSS segments had progression of necrotic core (P<0.001) and dense calcium (P<0.001) and regression of fibrous (P<0.001) and fibrofatty (P<0.001) tissue. Compared with intermediate-WSS segments, low-WSS segments demonstrated greater reduction in vessel (P<0.001) and lumen area (P<0.001), and high-WSS segments demonstrated an increase in vessel (P<0.001) and lumen (P<0.001) area. These changes resulted in a trend toward more constrictive remodeling in low- compared with high-WSS segments (73% versus 30%; P=0.06) and more excessive expansive remodeling in high- compared with low-WSS segments (42% versus 15%; P=0.16). CONCLUSIONS: Compared with intermediate-WSS coronary segments, low-WSS segments develop greater plaque and necrotic core progression and constrictive remodeling, and high-WSS segments develop greater necrotic core and calcium progression, regression of fibrous and fibrofatty tissue, and excessive expansive remodeling, suggestive of transformation to a more vulnerable phenotype. Clinical Trial Registration URL: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT00576576.

published proceedings

  • Circulation

altmetric score

  • 30.33

author list (cited authors)

  • Samady, H., Eshtehardi, P., McDaniel, M. C., Suo, J., Dhawan, S. S., Maynard, C., ... Giddens, D. P.

citation count

  • 592

complete list of authors

  • Samady, Habib||Eshtehardi, Parham||McDaniel, Michael C||Suo, Jin||Dhawan, Saurabh S||Maynard, Charles||Timmins, Lucas H||Quyyumi, Arshed A||Giddens, Don P

publication date

  • August 2011