Why intracranial atherosclerosis is such a dangerous cause of stroke?

New from Jason Hinman's team at David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA: when arteries narrow inside the brain, blood flow downstream gets sluggish and that directly changes how blood vessel cells behave. 

Using CT scans from stroke patients and 3D-printed replicas of their arteries lined with living cells, the team showed that these low-flow zones trigger cells to proliferate and switch on clot-promoting signals. 

It's a mechanistic link between the physics of blood flow and the biology of stroke risk. This is a much-needed step toward understanding why intracranial atherosclerosis is such a dangerous cause of stroke. 

Read the entire paper: Post-stenotic hemodynamics in intracranial atherosclerosis are associated with endothelial activation and pro-thrombotic signaling