Sheila G. West, Ph.D., Director
Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health
Pennsylvania State University

Our Research Mission:

The Vascular Health Interventions Laboratory is housed in the Health and Human Development Building at Penn State University.  The mission of the Vascular Health Interventions Lab is to provide measures of vascular health for short term, controlled feeding studies and to examine changes in cardiovascular responses to psychological stress after dietary interventions. The ultimate goal is to allow new interventions to be tested for their effects on multiple coronary risk markers simultaneously, in order to aid in the design of new functional foods and new dietary regimens.

Current studies examine the effects of dietary changes and nutritional supplements designed to promote normal function of the vascular endothelium.  Together with the Metabolic Diet Study Center, we measure the effects of short-term dietary interventions on flow-mediated dilation of the brachial artery (an index of endothelial health) and total peripheral resistance responses to behavioral challenges (including a measure of systemic vascular reactivity).    

Facilities:

Our laboratory includes: 1) two patient testing rooms with complete sets of cardiovascular recording equipment (Minnesota and Hutcheson impedance cardiographs with EKG, Dinamap blood pressure monitors, and customized software for estimating stroke volume, cardiac output, and other parameters heart activity), 2) access to microcentrifuge and –80 freezer for the processing of blood samples, and 3) computers for data entry and analysis.  

We collaborate with the General Clinical Research Center, an NIH funded clinical research site, on several of our intervention studies.  We have an identical set of cardiovascular recording equipment at our GCRC testing site.  

We have added state of the art vascular ultrasound to our assessment techniques.  This enables us to assess treatment related changes in responsiveness of single arteries (e.g. the brachial artery) under controlled conditions. A second ultrasound testing suite will be available for use in July, 2001. This second testing site will increase our capacity for conducting controlled feeding studies of vascular endpoints. 

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