Quantitative Analysis of the Relationship between Blood Vessel Wall Constituents and Viscoelastic Properties: Dynamic Biomechanical and Structural In Vitro Studies in Aorta and Carotid Arteries

Table 3

Structural parameters obtained from histological analyses.

	Carotid artery	Ascending aorta	Descending aorta
	MV ± SD	MV ± SD	MV ± SD
Smooth muscle (%)	49.69 ± 3.56	39.34 ± 4.62^a	46.43 ± 4.05^b
Elastin (%)	34.46 ± 2.50	57.84 ± 3.52^a	47.52 ± 8.76^ab
Collagen (%)	15.82 ± 1.63	3.16 ± 2.17^a	5.61 ± 5.10^ab
Elastic tissues (%)	50.28 ± 3.52	61.00 ± 5.19^a	53.13 ± 4.72^b
Smooth muscle (abs) (10^2 mm^2)	537.03 ± 38.43	2891.67 ± 339.87^a	2452.20 ± 213.83^a
Elastin (abs) (10^2 mm^2)	372.38 ± 27.00	4252.04 ± 258.92^a	2509.79 ± 462.79^ab
Collagen (abs) (10^2 mm^2)	171.00 ± 17.64	232.19 ± 59.53	296.27 ± 69.33^a

Relative (%) and absolute (abs) values of the arterial wall constituents evaluated through histological techniques. Elastic tissue values are the sum of the elastin and collagen amounts.
^a𝑃<0.05 with respect to carotid artery.
^b𝑃<0.05 with respect to ascending aorta.