The values of wall shear stress, turbulence kinetic energy and blood pressure gradient are associated with atherosclerotic plaque erosion in rabbits.

Aim: To clarify the contribution of hemodynamic factors to the onset of plaque erosion in smooth muscle cell (SMC)-rich atherosclerotic plaque. Methods: We developed a rabbit model of SMC-rich atherosclerotic plaque with various degree of stenosis induced by incomplete ligation and generated three-dimensional models of five rabbit femoral arteries based on 130-162 serial histological cross-sections at 100-μm intervals per artery. We performed a computational blood flow simulation using the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes model and calculated the wall shear stress (WSS), turbulence kinetic energy (TKE), blood pressure (BP) and blood pressure gradients (BPG) in eight sections (the inlet, the stenotic portion and areas 1, 2 and 5mm from the stenotic portion) in each rabbit. We also investigated whether the magnitude of WSS or TKE was related to the presence or absence of erosive injury by evaluating six points (the locally highest, median and lowest of WSS or TKE) in each section. Results: The magnitudes of WSS, TKE and BPG, but not BP, correlated significantly with the extent of histologically-defined plaque erosion (WSS, r=0.55, p＜0.001; TKE, r=0.53, p＜0.001; BPG, r=0.61, p＜0.0001, n=40). The values for WSS and TKE were significantly larger at sites with, compared to without, erosive injury (n=107 and n=119 points, respectively; both p＜0.0001). Conclusions: These results suggest that increased values of WSS, TKE and BPG considerably contribute to the onset of plaque erosion.