Age‐related changes of skin blood flow during postocclusive reactive hyperemia in human

Abstract

The objective was to study age-related alterations in the time-amplitude characteristics of the oscillatory components of peripheral blood flow in healthy humans during postocclusive reactive hyperemia. Forearm blood skin perfusion was studied by the method of laser Doppler flowmetry in 120 healthy volunteers, who were divided into two age groups: young (19-30 years old; n = 82) and middle-age (30-60 years old; n = 38). The forearm occlusion approach was used to reveal the reaction of the microvascular bed to transient ischemia. To estimate the age-related changes of separate oscillatory components of LDF signals during postocclusive reactive hyperemia, we applied adaptive time-amplitude wavelet analysis. A statistically significant increase in the skin blood perfusion after occlusion removal was revealed: 4-fold in the 1st and 3.5-fold in the 2nd group respectively. Both the amplitude of blood flow oscillations at rest and the postocclusive growth of the amplitude showed an age-related decline in the frequency intervals associated with the myogenic (0.052-0.145 Hz), sympathetic (0.021-0.052 Hz) and endothelial (0.0095-0.021 Hz) activity. The time-amplitude characteristics of the oscillatory components of peripheral blood flow depend on age, with the dependence becoming more evident after a transient ischemia.