Relationships Between Regional Lean Body Mass, Strength, and Vascular Function in Women

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Central arterial stiffness is inversely related to upper body muscular strength in young men, suggesting there may be a link between skeletal muscle and arterial function. This relationship has not been explored in women. There are also age-related declines in muscular and vascular function; it is unclear if age mediates this potential relationship. PURPOSE: To examine the relationships between regional lean body mass, strength, arterial stiffness and microvascular blood flow measures in younger and older women. METHODS: Eighteen younger (18-25 years) and 17 older (50-64 years) women had measures of lean body mass (dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry), strength (sum of three upper body and three lower body assessments of one-repetition maximum, 1RM), central (aortic) and peripheral (femoral) pulse wave velocity (PWV), and forearm blood flow (resting flow, peak reactive hyperemia, and total hyperemia measured with venous occlusion plethysmography). Relationships between variables were tested using Pearsons correlation coefficients, with and without controlling for age. RESULTS: Central PWV (6.8+/-1.7 m/s) was correlated with strength (270.9+/-51.8 kg) (r=-0.532; p=0.002) but this relationship was not statistically significant when controlling for age (r=-0.077; p=0.696). Resting blood flow (2.74+/-1.15 ml/min/100ml) (r=0.456; p=0.009) and total hyperemia (75.1+/-30.1 AUC) (r=0.448; p=0.009) but not peak hyperemia (22.2+/-7.2 ml/min/100ml) (r=0.258; p=0.148) were significantly related to lean body mass (4.2+/-0.6 kg) in the arms. The relationships between resting forearm blood flow (r=0.469; p=0.012) as well as total hyperemia (r=0.471; p=0.011) and lean body mass in the arms remained significant when controlling for age. Peripheral PWV (9.0+/-1.5 m/s) was not related to measures of strength or lean body mass (p>0.05). CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that central artery stiffness is related inversely to muscle strength but that this relationship appears to be due to the effects of age. Forearm microvascular function is related to regional lean body mass and this relationship appears to be independent of age. This suggests that the link between muscle mass and vascular function may be most apparent in the microvasculature and less apparent in large vessels in women.