Arterial stiffness during whole-body passive heat stress in healthy older adults

We tested the hypothesis that whole‐body passive heat stress reduces arterial stiffness in older adults. At preheat stress (baseline) and when core temperature was elevated by 0.6 ± 0.2°C (mild) and 1.2 ± 0.3°C (moderate), arterial stiffness was measured in eight healthy younger (26 ± 5 years) and eight healthy older (70 ± 4 years) adults in the supine position. Arterial stiffness was estimated from carotid‐to‐femoral pulse wave velocity (cfPWV, applanation tonometry). cfPWV was higher at baseline in older adults (8.8 ± 2.3 m/sec vs. 5.6 ± 0.9 m/sec, P < 0.01) and this difference was maintained throughout passive heat stress (P < 0.01). cfPWV did not change (P ≥ 0.49) with passive heat stress in either younger (at moderate heat stress: 6.0 ± 1.0 m/sec) or older (at moderate heat stress: 8.5 ± 1.6 m/sec) adults. However, the influence of baseline cfPWV on the change in cfPWV during mild (r = −0.66, P = 0.04) and moderate (r = −0.87, P < 0.01) heat stress were inversely related in older adults, and the strength of these relations was not statistically different (P = 0.08). In younger adults, the influence of baseline cfPWV on the change in cfPWV during mild heat stress was also inversely related (r = −0.79, P = 0.01), while the strength of this relation was attenuated at moderate heat stress (r = −0.24, P = 0.30). Changes in arterial stiffness during passive heat stress in adults aged ≥65 year are likely dependent on the magnitude of baseline arterial stiffness and not necessarily age.

Keywords

aging, arterial compliance, central blood pressure, hyperthermia, pulse wave velocity, wave reflection

Citation

Schlader ZJ, Okada Y, Best SA, Fu Q, Crandall CG. Arterial stiffness during whole-body passive heat stress in healthy older adults. Physiological Reports 7: e14094, 2019.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.14814/phy2.14094

Link(s) to data and video for this item

https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.14814/phy2.14094

Rights

This work is under a CC-BY license. You are free to copy and redistribute the material in any format, as well as remix, transform, and build upon the material as long as you give appropriate credit to the original creator, provide a link to the license, and indicate any changes made.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Type

Article

Collections

Zachary Schlader Research Collection

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