Temperature-mediated variability of skin vascular reactivity indices in monthly measurements

Abstract

It is known that decreased vascular reactivity is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular diseases, complications of diabetes mellitus. In the present study, we aimed to evaluate how room temperature may affect the results of reactivity assessment in real clinical practice.
The analysis included 496 measurements of perfusion on the left and right side of the body in 13 conditionally healthy subjects, performed between March 2022 and May 2024. Each measurement included determination of postocclusive reactive hyperaemia in the upper extremities and assessment of local thermal hyperaemia in the lower extremities. The measurement was performed using the incoherent optical fluctuation flowmetry. Influence of the temperature factor was assessed by constructing linear mixed-effects models.
During the entire observation period, the mean room temperature fluctuated at 23.4±1.1°C (minimum, 20.1°C; maximum, 26.9°C). A statistically significant effect of room temperature on both the level of baseline perfusion and the results of thermal and occlusion tests was shown. Using the thumb pad local heating test as an example, we obtained that a 1°C increase in room temperature resulted in: a 0.7 (95% CI: 0.39; 1.01. p < 0.001) perfusion unit (p.u.) increase in baseline perfusion, a 0.69 (95% CI: 0.28; 1.09. p < 0.001) p.u. increase in local thermal hyperaemia (3 min), decrease in relative perfusion gain by 38.71 (95% CI:-54.66; -22.76. p < 0.001) %.
Thus, we have shown that the results of vascular reactivity tests depend on room temperature conditions and the temperature factor should be taken into account when interpreting the results of vascular reactivity assessment.

Speaker

Glazkov Alexey
Moscow Regional Research and Clinical Institute
Russia

Discussion

Ask question