Fig. 2.

Selection of prototypic athero-prone (Right) and athero-protective (Left) waveforms. Two waveforms were chosen as representative of the hemodynamics corresponding to an atherosclerosis-susceptible and an atherosclerosis-resistant region of the human carotid artery. The waveform with the highest OSI (0.45; corresponding to point 14 in Fig. 6) was chosen from the carotid sinus to represent the wall shear stress fluctuations in this atherosclerosis-susceptible region. Another shear stress waveform from the distal internal carotid artery was chosen as representative of the wall shear stress profile in an atherosclerosis-resistant region. These two waveforms (designated athero-prone and athero-protective, respectively) were then applied to cultured human EC by using the dynamic flow system as described in Materials and Methods.