Honors Program

Honors in Biology

Date of Award

5-2021

Thesis Professor(s)

Pearl McCuistion, Krishna Singh, Cerrone Foster

Thesis Professor Department

Biological Sciences

Thesis Reader(s)

Rebecca Pyles, Joseph Bidwell

Abstract

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death for both men and women in developed countries. Compared to age-matched males, premenopausal women experience lower rates of CVD but this increases after menopause. A central feature in CVD is changes in sympathetic regulation leading to pathological changes such as cardiac hypertrophy characterized by changes in cardiomyocyte size due to overcompensation of the muscle following injury. The goal of this research is to study the effect of prolonged estrogen loss on cardiac hypertrophy following chronic sympathetic stimulation. Female mice were ovariectomized at 10 weeks of age and treated with Isoproterenol to induce chronic sympathetic stimulation for 7 days, 1- and 5-months post ovariectomy. Cardiac hypertrophy was determined by examining left ventricular mass, heart weight, and myocyte cross sectional area. Results showed that prolonged estrogen deficiency exacerbated cardiac hypertrophy. These results have implications for human health, addressing differences in how the cardiovascular system responds to stress with post-menopausal women.

Publisher

East Tennessee State University

Document Type

Honors Thesis - Withheld

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Copyright

Copyright by the authors.

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