Understanding the viscoelastic behavior of arterial elastin in glucose via relaxation time distribution spectrum

Elastin is a critical extracellular matrix protein that provides many biological tissues with resilience. In elastic arteries such as aorta, elasticity is crucial for energy storage and transmission of the pulsatile blood flow. As one of the main mechanisms of aging, non-enzymatic glycation can greatly compromise the mechanical properties of the long-lived elastin. In this study, effect of glucose on the viscoelastic behavior of purified porcine aortic elastin was investigated through stress relaxation tests and the corresponding relaxation time distribution spectra. Elastin was incubated in 2 M glucose solution at 37 °C for 4, 7, 14, 21 or 28 days. Biaxial stress relaxation tests were performed to study the viscoelastic property of elastin. Elastin samples with glucose treatment show increased stress relaxation with incubation time. Continuous relaxation time distribution spectra were obtained from the stress relaxation data using Tikhonov regularization method. Generally the spectra of both untreated and treated elastin have a broad range of relaxation time constants and multiple peaks located between 0.1-10,000 s. The intensity of the short-term peak (0.1-10 s) increases after glucose exposure whereas the intensity of the long-term peak (> 100 s) decreases. The dominant peaks, i.e., the long-term peak of untreated tissue and the short-term peak of glucose treated tissue, suggest different relaxation mechanisms. The initial stress level dependency of stress relaxation was studied and the results suggested that the intensity of all the peaks increases with higher initial stresses. A multi-exponential model was developed to describe the stress relaxation behavior with material parameters obtained directly from the continuous relaxation spectrum. To fully characterize the relaxation processes, a multi-exponential model with four exponential terms, located between 0.001-1 s, 1-10 s, 10-100 s, and 100-10,000 s and obtained directly from the corresponding relaxation spectrum, appears to best capture the stress relaxation behavior of elastin before and after glucose exposure.