Twenty-fold difference in hemodynamic wall shear stress between murine and human aortas.
Endothelial cells regulate vascular tone and mural remodelling in a shear-dependent manner that is commonly assumed to keep wall shear stress constant across arteries and species. Allometric arguments show that aortic flow velocity is constant across species, a deduction that is consistent with much experimental data, but the same arguments also show that the shear stress experienced by aortic endothelium will depend inversely on body mass to the 3/8th power, and hence will be 20-fold higher in mice than in men. This conclusion is robust and has important implications for the study of shear-dependent vascular biology and pathology.
Weinberg
Peter D
PD
Physiological Flow Studies Group, Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College, London, London SW7 2AZ, UK. p.weinberg@imperial.ac.uk
Ross Ethier
C
C
D000818:Animals; D001011:Aorta / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D001835:Body Weight; D004730:Endothelium, Vascular / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D013045:Species Specificity; D013314:Stress, Mechanical