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Pressure Dependency of Retinal Arterial Pulse Wave Velocity in the Rat

Artery Research volume 26, pages 27–33 (2020)Cite this article

Abstract

Purpose

The retinal vasculature provides unique in vivo access to the microcirculation and presents the possibility of measuring small artery (retinal) stiffness using pulse wave velocity (PWV). This study investigates whether retinal artery PWV (rPWV) has a blood pressure (BP) dependency.

Methods

Fundus videos from eight Sprague-Dawley rats aged 12 weeks were captured (Zeiss fundus microscope with high-speed camera, 125 fps, Optronis, Germany) simultaneously with aortic BP. Retinal artery diameter waveforms at proximal and distal sites were extracted and transit time calculated from the phase delay between frequency components (4–6 Hz, typical heart rate of rats) of the waveforms. rPWV was measured across a physiological range of mean arterial pressure (MAP): baseline (90–110 mmHg); 130 mmHg to baseline following systemic phenylephrine (PE) infusion (30 µg/kg/min); 130 mmHg to baseline during PE infusion with simultaneous inferior vena cava occlusion (VO); 70 mmHg to baseline following systemic sodium nitroprusside infusion; and 70 mmHg to baseline following VO. The correlation between retinal artery rPWV and BP was quantified.

Results

There was a significant positive correlation between retinal artery rPWV and MAP as expected (0.19 mm/s/mmHg, R2 = 0.59, p < 0.001). There was a positive correlation between retinal and aortic PWV (R2 = 0.09, p = 0.03).

Conclusion

The pressure dependency of the measured rPWV indicates the measure has utility in in vivo quantification of the impact on microvessels of cardiovascular diseases. To elucidate the predictive value of screening rPWV in systemic cardiovascular abnormalities, the relation needs to be investigated in humans.

Highlights

  • Retinal pulse wave velocity (rPWV) presents the opportunity for measuring small vessel arterial stiffness in vivo.

  • rPWV measurement relies on complex image filtering to obtain diameter waveforms, bringing uncertainty as to whether the measure does reflect arterial stiffness.

  • This study measures rPWV in the rat showing that it varies with blood pressure, a fundamental property of material stiffness of arteries.

  • This indicates that the rPWV measure is associated with arterial stiffness.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

    Mahdieh Rezaeian, Dana Georgevsky & Stuart Graham

  2. Vision Science Group, Graduate School of Health, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    S. Mojtaba Golzan

  3. Department of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

    Alberto Avolio & Mark Butlin

Authors
  1. Mahdieh Rezaeian
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  2. Dana Georgevsky
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  3. S. Mojtaba Golzan
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  4. Stuart Graham
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  5. Alberto Avolio
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  6. Mark Butlin
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mark Butlin.

Additional information

Peer review under responsibility of the Association for Research into Arterial Structure and Physiology

Data availability statement: The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author (M.B.), upon reasonable request.

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This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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Rezaeian, M., Georgevsky, D., Golzan, S.M. et al. Pressure Dependency of Retinal Arterial Pulse Wave Velocity in the Rat. Artery Res 26, 27–33 (2020). https://doi.org/10.2991/artres.k.200201.001

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.2991/artres.k.200201.001

Keywords

Artery Research

ISSN: 1876-4401

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