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Remodeling of the uterine artery during and early after pregnancy in the mouse

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Abstract

Pregnancy associates with dramatic changes in maternal cardiovascular physiology that ensure that the utero-placental circulation can support the developing fetus. Particularly striking is the marked flow-induced remodeling of uterine arteries during pregnancy and their recovery following birth. Whereas details are available in the literature on alterations in hemodynamics within and changes in the dimensions of uterine arteries during and following pregnancy in mice, we report here the first biaxial biomechanical phenotyping of these arteries during this dynamic period of growth and remodeling (G&R). To gain additional insight into the measured G&R, we also use a computational constrained mixture model to describe and predict findings, including simulations related to complications that may arise during pregnancy. It is found that dramatic pregnancy-induced remodeling of the uterine artery is largely, but not completely, reversed in the postpartum period, which appears to be driven by increases in collagen turnover among other intramural changes. By contrast, data on the remodeling of the ascending aorta, an elastic artery, reveal modest changes that are fully recovered postpartum. There is strong motivation to continue biomechanical studies on this critical aspect of women’s health, which has heretofore not received appropriate consideration from the biomechanics community.

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Acknowledgements

This work was made possible by discretionary funds provided by Yale University.

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Author notes

  1. Sae-Il Murtada and Marcos Latorre have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Sae-Il Murtada & Jay D. Humphrey

  2. Center for Research and Innovation in Bioengineering, Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, Spain

    Marcos Latorre

  3. Vascular Biology and Therapeutics Program, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA

    Jay D. Humphrey

Authors
  1. Sae-Il Murtada
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  2. Marcos Latorre
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  3. Jay D. Humphrey
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Correspondence to Jay D. Humphrey.

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Murtada, SI., Latorre, M. & Humphrey, J.D. Remodeling of the uterine artery during and early after pregnancy in the mouse. Biomech Model Mechanobiol 22, 1531–1540 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10237-022-01674-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10237-022-01674-2

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