Role of blood flow in endothelial functionality: a review

Abstract

Endothelial cells, located on the surface of blood vessel walls, are constantly stimulated by mechanical forces from the blood flow. The mechanical forces, i.e., fluid shear stress, induced by the blood flow play a pivotal role in controlling multiple physiological processes at the endothelium and in regulating various pathways that maintain homeostasis and vascular function. In this review, research looking at different blood fluid patterns and fluid shear stress in the circulation system is summarized, together with the interactions between the blood flow and the endothelial cells. This review also highlights the flow profile as a response to the configurational changes of the endothelial glycocalyx, which is less revisited in previous reviews. The role of endothelial glycocalyx in maintaining endothelium health and the strategies for the restoration of damaged endothelial glycocalyx are discussed from the perspective of the fluid shear stress. This review provides a new perspective regarding our understanding of the role that blood flow plays in regulating endothelial functionality.

Infection-on-Chip: anin vitrohuman vessel model to studyNeisseria meningitidiscolonization and vascular damages

“…The laser ablation approach used here will allow future studies to explore the impact of vessel morphology on bacterial adhesion. Indeed, vascular geometry might disturb streamlines and participates in bacterial colonization in strategic low velocity regions [31]. Our system, highly tunable allows the design of vessel surrogate of various sizes and shapes, thus representing a unique tool to further explore how vascular geometry and shear stress impacts T4P-mediated vascular colonization in healthy [53,54] and pathological (e.g., diabetes [55,56]) conditions, by testing bacterial adhesion in vessels of different shapes (straight, branched, tortuous).…”

“…Flow-mediated shear stress is a key factor that shapes endothelial cells physiology [31] as well as N. meningitidis adhesion along the endothelium [32]. To define the wall shear stress that needs to be applied in our system, we performed particle image velocimetry (PIV) in live mice, by injected fluorescent beads in the blood circulation (Fig.…”