Exercise Averts High Pressure-Induced Vascular Dysfunction

Can chronic exercise prevent endothelial damage that occurs to the arterioles because of acute increases in arterial pressure? Consulting Editor David Gutterman (Medical College of Wisconsin) interviews lead author Austin Robinson (University of Delaware) and content expert Lisa Lesniewski (University of Utah) about this very question in our latest podcast. Using a unique animal model comparing sedentary mice to mice who voluntarily ran 6 km per day, Robinson and co-authors found that NADPH oxidase and angiotensin II were responsible for impaired flow-induced dilation following high pressure stress in arterioles removed from the “couch potato” mice but not in exercised mice. Why did the authors choose to study resistance artery function in subcutaneous adipose tissue, compared to visceral adipose tissue? What are the implications for maintaining cardiovascular fitness, and how long does a bout of exercise need to last to confer the vasculoprotective effects? Listen and find out.

 

Austin T. Robinson, Ibra S. Fancher, Varadarajan Sudhahar, Jing Tan Bian, Marc D. Cook, Abeer M. Mahmoud, Mohamed M. Ali, Masuko Ushio-Fukai, Michael D. Brown, Tohru Fukai, Shane A. Phillips Short-term regular aerobic exercise reduces oxidative stress produced by acute in the adipose microvasculature Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol, published May 1, 2017. DOI: 10.1152/ajpheart.00684.2016