Age-Related Alterations in Endothelial Function of Femoral Artery in Young SHR and WKY Rats

Figure 5

Area under the curve (AUC) of the vascular responses, based on the individual concentration-dependent relaxation curves to acetylcholine (ACh) in isolated femoral arteries of 7- and 22-week-old Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) and spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR). Values represent mean ± SEM of 6–8 rats. SHR-7: 7-week-old SHR; SHR-22: 22-week-old SHR; WKY-7: 7-week-old WKY rats; WKY-22: 22-week-old WKY rats. Marks of significances over the entire columns represent significant differences between the total ACh-induced relaxations. Marks inside the black part indicate significances between NO-dependent component of vasorelaxation and marks inside the white bar represent the significant differences between the NO-independent components. Symbols have the following meanings: ^x𝑃<0.05 compared to age-matched WKY (SHR-7 versus WKY-7, SHR-22 versus WKY-22), ^∗𝑃<0.05 compared to juvenile rats (WKY-22 versus WKY-7, SHR-22 versus SHR-7).