ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:In recent years, great progress has been achieved in the mechanical and viscoelastic properties of arterial blood vessels of normal human corpses and animals. OBJECTIVE: To quantitatively analyze the tensile mechanical properties of thoracic aorta in normaly fed spontaneously hypertensive rats and salt-loaded spontaneously hypertensive rats. METHODS: Twenty spontaneously hypertensive rats were obtained and randomly divided into experimental and control groups (n=10/group). Rats in the experimental group were subjected to continuous salt loading intervention for 16 weeks. Rats in the control group were fed with normal diet and ordinary tap water. At the 16th week, 10 specimens of thoracic aorta of rats from these two groups were harvested to conduct stress relaxation experiments.RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The decrease in stress at 7 200 seconds and the decrease in normalized stress relaxation function value at 7 200 seconds of thoracic aortic specimens of rats in experimental group were both lower than those in the control group (P< 0.05). These results confirm that the stress relaxation properties of thoracic aorta of normaly fed and salt-loaded spontaneously hypertensive rats change, wherein the changes in salt-loaded spontaneously hypertensive rats are more obvious.