Simulation analysis for flow-mediated dilation using a mathematical model based on physiological mechanisms

摘要

Assessment of the vascular endothelial function provides important diagnostic and prognostic information on patients with (or at risk of) cardiovascular disease. Flow-mediated dilation (FMD) is the most widely used noninvasive method to assess the endothelial function. However, there are some problems with this method, such as a long ischemic time and reproducibility of the test results. To solve these problems, we developed a mathematical model for vasodilatation with intra and inter-cellular pathways. In this study, we compared the simulation results with the FMD measurement results to evaluate the proposed model. We also performed a simulation analysis using the proposed model on FMD characteristics taken from the literature. The results showed that the proposed model was effective at analyzing the underlying mechanisms of FMD. The model will be key to the development of a new diagnostic method.