Towards the modelling of ageing and atherosclerosis effects in ApoE(-/-) mice aortic tissue

Experimental Protocols to Test Aortic Soft Tissues: A Systematic Review

Experimental protocols are fundamental for quantifying the mechanical behaviour of soft tissue. These data are crucial for advancing the understanding of soft tissue mechanics, developing and calibrating constitutive models, and informing the development of more accurate and predictive computational simulations and artificial intelligence tools. This paper offers a comprehensive review of experimental tests conducted on soft aortic tissues, employing the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) methodology, based on the Scopus, Web of Science, IEEE, Google Scholar and PubMed databases. This study includes a detailed overview of the test method protocols, providing insights into practical methodologies, specimen preparation and full-field measurements. The review also briefly discusses the post-processing methods applied to extract material parameters from experimental data. In particular, the results are analysed and discussed providing representative domains of stress-strain curves for both uniaxial and biaxial tests on human aortic tissue.

Computational Modeling Predicts Immuno-Mechanical Mechanisms of Maladaptive Aortic Remodeling in Hypertension

Uncontrolled hypertension is a major risk factor for myriad cardiovascular diseases. Among its many effects, hypertension increases central artery stiffness which in turn is both an initiator and indicator of disease. Despite extensive clinical, animal, and basic science studies, the biochemomechanical mechanisms by which hypertension drives aortic stiffening remain unclear. In this paper, we show that a new computational model of aortic growth and remodeling can capture differential effects of induced hypertension on the thoracic and abdominal aorta in a common mouse model of disease. Because the simulations treat the aortic wall as a constrained mixture of different constituents having different material properties and rates of turnover, one can gain increased insight into underlying constituent-level mechanisms of aortic remodeling. Model results suggest that the aorta can mechano-adapt locally to blood pressure elevation in the absence of marked inflammation, but large increases in inflammation drive a persistent maladaptive phenotype characterized primarily by adventitial fibrosis. Moreover, this fibrosis appears to occur via a marked increase in the rate of deposition of collagen having different material properties in the absence of a compensatory increase in the rate of matrix degradation. Controlling inflammation thus appears to be key to reducing fibrosis, but therapeutic strategies should not compromise the proteolytic activity of the wall that is essential to mechanical homeostasis.

Passive and Active Triaxial Wall Mechanics in a Two-Layer Model of Porcine Coronary Artery

Triaxial active and passive mechanical properties of coronary arteries are needed for understanding arterial mechanics in health and disease. The aim of the study was to quantify both active and passive strain energy functions in circumferential, axial and radial directions based on the experimental measurement. Moreover, a two-layer computational model was used to determine the transmural distribution of stresses and strains across the vessel wall. The first Piola-Kirchhoff stresses in the three normal directions had the approximate relationship as:\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\,{T}_{\theta \theta }\cong 2{T}_{zz}\cong 5|{T}_{rr}|$$\end{document}Tθθ≅2Tzz≅5|Trr|. The two-layer model showed that circumferential Cauchy stresses increased significantly from the intima layer to the interface between media and adventitia layers (from ~80 to 160 kPa), dropped abruptly at the interface (from ~160 to <5 kPa), and increased slightly towards the outer boundary of the adventitia layer. In contrast, absolute values of radial Cauchy stress decreased continuously from the inner to outer boundaries of the vessel wall (from ~11 kPa to zero). Smooth muscle cell contraction significantly increased the ratio of radial to circumferential Cauchy stresses at the intima-media layer, which had the highest values at the intima layer.