Sex-dependent jugular vein optical attenuation and distension during head-down tilt and lower body negative pressure

Non-contact coded hemodynamic imaging (CHI) is a novel wide-field near-infrared spectroscopy system which monitors blood volume by quantifying attenuation of light passing through the underlying vessels. This study tested the hypothesis that CHI-based jugular venous attenuation (JVA) would be larger in men, and change in JVA would be greater in men compared to women during two fluid shift challenges. The association of JVA with ultrasound-based cross-sectional area (CSA) was also tested. Ten men and 10 women completed three levels of head-down tilt (HDT) and four levels of lower body negative pressure (LBNP). Both JVA and CSA were increased by HDT and reduced by LBNP (all p < 0.001). Main effects of sex indicated that JVA was higher in men than women during both HDT (p = 0.003) and LBNP (p = 0.011). Interaction effects of sex and condition were observed for JVA during HDT (p = 0.005) and LBNP (p < 0.001). We observed moderate repeated-measures correlations (r(rm)) between JVA and CSA in women during HDT (r(rm) = 0.57, p = 0.011) and in both men (r(rm) = 0.74, p < 0.001) and women (r(rm) = 0.66, p < 0.001) during LBNP. While median within-person correlation coefficients indicated an even stronger association between JVA and CSA, this association became unreliable for small changes in CSA. As hypothesized, JVA was greater and changed more in men compared to women during both HDT and LBNP. CHI provides a non-contact method of tracking large changes in internal jugular vein blood volume that occur with acute fluid shifts, but data should be interpreted in a sex-dependent manner.