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Updated: Jun 17, 2026

Measuring Ascending Aortic Stiffness In Vivo in Mice Using Ultrasound
Published on: December 2, 2014
Aortic elasticity is impaired in patients with endemic fluorosis
Ercan Varol1, Selahattin Akcay, I Hakki Ersoy
1Department of Cardiology, Faculty of Medicine, Suleyman Demirel University, Isparta, Turkey. drercanvarol@yahoo.com
Abstract:
Sixty-three patients with endemic fluorosis (36 males/27 females; mean age 33.9 +/- 8.6 years) and 45 age-, sex-, and body mass index-matched healthy controls (30 males/15 females; mean age 32.7 +/- 8.8 years) were included in this study. Aortic stiffness indices, aortic strain (AS), aortic distensibility (AD), and aortic strain index (ASI) were calculated from the aortic diameters measured by echocardiography and blood pressure obtained by sphygmomanometry. The urine fluoride levels of fluorosis patients were significantly higher than control subjects as expected (1.9 +/- 0.1 mg/l vs. 0.4 +/- 0.1 mg/l, respectively; P < 0.001). AS and AD were significantly lower in fluorosis patients than in the controls (for AS 5.3 +/- 3.6 vs. 8.0 +/- 3.4%; P < 0.001 and for AD 0.2 +/- 0.1 vs. 0.3 +/- 0.1 cm(2) dyn(-1) 10(-3); P < 0.001, respectively). In contrast, significantly higher ASI was observed in fluorosis patients than in the controls (3.4 +/- 0.6 vs. 3.0 +/- 0.4; P < 0.001, respectively). The results of our study demonstrate that elastic properties of ascending aorta are impaired in patients with endemic fluorosis.
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