Induced-hypercholesterolemia as a probable cause of alterations in pulse pressure in wistar kyoto rats

Abstract

Background: The involvement of hypercholesterolemia in cardiovascular disorders has been widely researched but the impact on the specific cardiovascular (CV) indices following remodeling and cardiac malfunction remain to be fully elucidated. The aim this research is intended to further the understanding of cardiovascular function under hypercholesterolemic condition in mammals and serve as a guide to pharmaceutical formulation and medical interventions.
Methods: The telemetry technique was used to investigate the cardiovascular dysfunctions in induced hypercholesterolemia in Wistar Kyoto (WKY) rats. Methods for this investigation include: inducing hypercholesterolemic condition in Wistar Kyoto rats through diet; measuring the blood cholesterol levels of the experimental animals; measuring cardiovascular indices in conscious rats to establish vascular dysfunction and/or cardiac malfunction.
Results: Our study showed that pulse pressure decreases in experimental WKY rats with increasing cholesterol content in the diet. It also shows that diet related pulse pressure decrease occurs in both low and high animal activities. The pulse pressure was reduced at both low and high animal activities in the 2% cholesterol diet (N=6) when compared to control (N=4) and 1% cholesterol diet (N=7). All results presented were statistically significant at a P value < 0.05. Our study has shown that pulse pressure (PP) declined significantly in the 2% cholesterol loaded diet, but not in the 1% diet. We also observed that in overall, the 1% diet group maintained close to normal cardiovascular indices compared to the control and 2%.
Conclusion: Our results show that a high cholesterol diet may have negatively impacted the cardiac function more than the vascular function.

Keywords: hypercholesterolemia, remodeling, vascular, pharmaceutical, dysfunctions, cardiovascular, telemetry, WKY rats