When Does the Heart Become Larger versus Smaller in Old Age?

As you may know, the aging heart often exhibits ventricular hypertrophy, an enlargement and weakening of the muscle. This appears driven in large part by the increased burden of cellular senescence in later life, given reversal of hypertrophy observed after senolytic treatment in old animals. This hypertrophy can also be thought as a downstream consequence of hypertension, but biology is rarely so simple as to have a single line of cause and effect. As noted in this paper, people lose muscle mass and strength with age, leading to the weakness and frailty of sarcopenia. The heart is a muscle, and a shrinking of that muscle is observed in sarcopenia patients, a condition here termed cardiosarcopenia. So does the heart become larger or smaller with age? That appears to vary from individual to individual, implying interactions between, or common mechanisms affecting, the state of skeletal muscle and heart muscle. The traditional view of cardiovascular aging is that of age-related adaptations in the heart characterized by increased left ventricular (LV) mass (LVM) and LV hypertrophy (LVH), which are often secondary to increased systolic blood pressure mainly mediated by arterial stiffening. Yet skeletal muscle sarcopenia occurs with aging but may be accelerated in heart failure states. In advanced stages of heart failure, skeletal muscle wasting accompanied by severe exercise intolerance have long been observed in various cohorts. To date, observations pertaining t...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs