Biomechanical Compatibility With Physiological Limb-Flexion Deformation Reduces Inflammation and Neointimal...

The femoropopliteal artery undergoes substantial axial compression, bending, torsion, and pinching during limb flexion. When an implanted stent does not accommodate these deformations, repetitive biomechanical mismatch may alter the vascular response to implantation and contribute to restenosis. We tested whether designing a peripheral stent to better accommodate physiologic limb-flexion deformation reduces the subsequent inflammatory and neointimal response.

A nitinol stent was developed using multi-objective computational optimization to maintain arterial apposition while reducing wall stress and luminal pinching during physiologic deformation. Sixteen Yucatan minipigs were studied in independent 3- and 6-month cohorts (n=8 each). Each animal received the optimized stent in one limb and a commercial stent with representative biomechanical behavior contralaterally. CTA quantified in vivo limb-flexion deformation, while μCT and histology assessed stenosis, neointimal accumulation, inflammatory-cell burden, αSMA-positive tissue, and extracellular-matrix composition.

The optimized stent accommodated greater axial shortening than the commercial comparator at both 3 months (11.2±2.7% vs. 6.6±2.1%, p=0.003) and 6 months (13.7±4.4% vs. 6.8±2.3%, p=0.004). Intimal hyperplasia volume was lower with the optimized stent at 3 months (227.5±85.2 vs. 350.0±130.5 mm ³ , p=0.002) and 6 months (183.6±46.2 vs. 261.2±60.6 mm ³ , p=0.001), with significantly lower maximum, mean, and median stenosis at both timepoints. At 3 months, macrophage and total inflammatory-cell counts were 51% and 45% lower, respectively, with the optimized stent. Histologic tissue area was 28% lower at 3 months and 12% lower at 6 months. αSMA-positive tissue fraction was higher with the optimized stent at both timepoints, whereas elastin, glycosaminoglycan, and collagen fractions were similar between devices.

Improved accommodation of limb-flexion deformation was associated with a smaller inflammatory and neointimal response to stent implantation through 6 months, while overall neointimal matrix composition remained largely unchanged. These findings provide in vivo evidence that biomechanical compatibility with the dynamic lower-limb environment can influence vascular healing and should be considered a mechanistic design criterion for peripheral artery stents.