FIGURE 6.

Examples of elastin and collagen fiber disarray, breaks, and fiber disorientation in the thoracic aorta of young (A,C) as compared to those of old premenopausal females (B,D). In old premenopausal monkeys, elastin and collagen disarray, fiber breaks, and fiber disorientation were increased compared to the young females. The green arrows indicate the change of fiber angle from the starting point of a fiber toward the end point of a fiber, and the black arrows indicate the fiber breaks. A linear correlation between stiffness and extracellular matrix was found for both (E) collagen disarray and (F) elastin disarray. Disarray was greater in the abdominal vs. the thoracic aorta in both old and young female monkeys and both were greater in old female vs. young female monkeys (reprint from Babici et al., 2020).