Arterial stiffness during whole‐body passive heat stress in healthy older adults

Figure 1. Carotid‐to‐femoral pulse wave velocity (cfPWV) during passive heat stress in Younger (n = 8) and Older (n = 8) adults. Mean ± SD. * indicates different from Younger (P < 0.01). P‐values for two‐way mixed‐model ANOVA are noted.

Figure 2. Aortic augmentation pressure (A), reflected wave time delay (B), the augmentation index (C) and the augmentation index at a heart rate of 75 bpm (D), indices of pulse wave reflection, during passive heat stress in Younger (n = 8) and Older (n = 9) adults. Mean ± SD. * indicates different from Younger (P ≤ 0.04), B indicates different from Baseline (P = 0.05). P‐values for two‐way mixed‐model ANOVA are noted.

Figure 3. Relations between baseline carotid‐to‐femoral pulse wave velocity (cfPWV) and the change (Δ) in cfPWV during mild (A) and moderate (B) passive heat stress in Younger (n = 8) and Older (n = 8) adults. ∂ indicates different from mild heat stress (P < 0.01). Dashed line square highlights the three older adults with baseline cfPWV >10 cm/sec who also demonstrated the greatest reductions in cfPWV with passive heat stress. Although there is no reason to believe it is an outlier, it is notable that the removal of the data point with a solid square around it in the mild heat stress figure (A) did not meaningfully change the results (r = −0.82, P = 0.01). Notably, similar findings were found when the data obtained from the younger and older adults were pooled together at mild (r = −0.56, P = 0.03) and moderate (r = −0.77, P < 0.01) heat stress.