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Aging and cardioprotection

Arshad Jahangir1, Sandeep Sagar, Andre Terzic

  • 1Marriott Heart Disease Research Program, Division of Cardiovascular Diseases, and Department of Medicine, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, MN 55905, USA. jahangir.arshad@mayo.edu

Journal of Applied Physiology (Bethesda, Md. : 1985)
|August 25, 2007
PubMed

Insights

As people age, their hearts become more vulnerable to damage, increasing the risk of death and disability from heart disease. Understanding the aging heart is crucial for developing new treatments to protect elderly individuals.

Area of Science:

  • Cardiovascular Biology
  • Gerontology
  • Cardiac Pathophysiology

Background:

  • Advanced age is a significant risk factor for mortality and morbidity in structural heart disease.
  • The global elderly population is increasing, highlighting the urgent need to understand cardiac aging and vulnerability.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To summarize current knowledge on human cardiac aging from clinical and experimental studies.
  • To identify targets for protecting the aging myocardium and limiting age-related myocardial dysfunction.

Main Methods:

  • Review of clinical and experimental studies on cardiac aging.
  • Analysis of age-related genomic and proteomic dynamics in human cardiac tissue.

Main Results:

  • Aging attenuates cardioprotective pathways, but human cardiac aging presents a complex phenotype not fully replicated in animal models.
  • Specific aging-associated genomic and proteomic changes increase heart susceptibility to injury.

Conclusions:

  • Further research on human cardiac tissue is essential to understand aging-related myocardial dysfunction.
  • Identifying therapeutic targets is critical for promoting healthy aging and preventing age-related heart disease.

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