Impacts of Western Diet on Vascular Function

To determine the effects of acute exposure to a more physiologically relevant stressor, we exposed a sub-set of arteries (n = 7 (YC), 8 (OC), 4 (YVR), 8 (OVR)) to an ex-vivo, simulated Western diet via intraluminal infusion for 40 minutes prior to pre-constriction followed by assessment of EDD to ACh. This ex-vivo challenge comprised warmed physiological saline containing 8mM glucose (in addition to 5mM glucose already present in physiological saline, Sigma Aldrich Corp.) and 300 μM palmitate (Sigma Aldrich Corp.), two of the major metabolites present upon consumption of a Western-style diet high in saturated fat and sugar. These concentrations were selected to simulate those reported in the circulation of rodents following chronic consumption of Western-style diets [43 (link), 78 (link)–80 (link)]. The impairments in peak EDD and AUC induced by this ex-vivo simulated Western diet were determined as the relative reduction in peak EDD or AUC in the presence versus absence of ex-vivo simulated Western diet ([PeakEDD_ACh-PeakEDD_WD/PeakEDD_ACh]x100; [AUC_ACh-AUC_WD/AUC_ACh]x100).