A multilayered wall model of arterial growth and remodeling

Abstract

Adaptations of large arteries to sustained alterations in hemodynamics that cause changes in both caliber and stiffness are increasingly recognized as important initiators or indicators of cardiovascular risk to high flow, low resistance organs such as the brain, heart, and kidney. There is, therefore, a pressing need to understand better the underlying causes of geometric and material adaptations by large arteries and the associated time courses. Although such information must ultimately come from well designed experiments, mathematical models will continue to play a vital role in the design of these experiments and their interpretation. In this paper, we present a new multilayered model of the time course of basilar artery growth and remodeling in response to sustained alterations in blood pressure and flow. We show, for example, that single- and multi-layered models consistently predict similar changes in caliber and wall thickness, but multilayered models provide additional insight into other important metrics such as the residual stress related opening angle and the axial prestress, both of which are fundamental to arterial homeostasis and responses to injury or insult.