I would like to study shear-stress induced changes in the circulation of mice. Is there any established physical or chemical method to increase shear-stress in the blood vessels and perhaps even quantify it?
Slightly unrelated I know, but you may find it useful to look at publications from Professor Gary Lewin's group at the Max Delbruck Institute in Berlin. This group uses nano and Piezo motors to stimulate mechanoreceptive neurons innervating the skin of mice in an ex-vivo skin-nerve preparation. It may be that you could adapt their equipment/methodology for you needs.
Thanks Sean but I think we might be talking about two different things because my question was not phrased properly. I have edited my question now. Perhaps you can still help me? :)
It sort of depends on your vessel size is it an aorta or the micro-circulation for example.
Currently there are only bulk flow options for measuring wall shear stress (which I assume you're talking about). IE measure the properties of the bulk flow and calculate the WSS. There are ways to do this (uPIV, red blood cell tracing etc) which might be good enough for your work. To change it in-vivo simply alter: Blood velocity, vessel width (vasodilation), viscosity of the blood or possibly the glycocalyx layer. However separating these from other effects is not so easy.
Ah! Thanks Kenton for the quick and helpful reply!
Would you know some way to alter blood velocity? Also, could you please tell me what IE stands for?
humm typos: I.E. measures the properties of the bulk flow and calculate the WSS.
I was going to suggest looking up the glycocalyx fraternities papers but I've just read your other question so you know about them.
How are you imaging the vasculature in these experiments? And what type of changes are you trying to detect? for example expression of proteins? or permeability? or structural etc.
Hey Kashish!
I recently read a review about animal models for the investigation of shear stress-induced atherosclerosis (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002191501501014X). The review does not perfectly address your question, because it focused on surgical manipulation of the vasculature to manipulate the blood flow velocity (e.g. ligations, grafts and cast placements). But I thought that you might find some suggestions for your experimental setup.
Because shear stress highly depends on the vessel diameter, I would prefer cast placement models to alter the vessel diameter. You might be able to roughly predict the shear stress with the Hagen-Poiseuille equation (as suggested here: http://www.hellenicjcardiol.org/archive/full_text/2005/1/2005_1_9.pdf). Another possibility to measure the shear stress could be high speed video microcinematography (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0026286212001999). Aristotle Koutsiaris is a very nice person and would surely answer you some questions about this method.
I know, I did not directly answer your question, but maybe I could help you anyway.
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