Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells Become Prone to Altered Behavior with Age

The altered signaling environment in aged tissue produces changes in cell behavior, some of which is adaptive and helpful, and some of which is maladaptive and harmful. In some cases the same process can be one or the other depending on context. Cellular senescence, for example, is helpful in the contexts of cancer suppression and regeneration from injury, but only up until the point at which senescent cells are no longer removed as rapidly as they are created, at which point their continued, unrelenting pro-growth, pro-inflammatory signaling contributes to many of the forms of tissue dysfunction observed in aging. Vascular smooth muscle is vital to the operation of the vasculature, determining blood pressure via appropriate contraction and dilation of blood vessels in response to environmental cues. Today's open access paper is focused on the ways in which vascular smooth muscle cells change behavior in old tissues. This can change the properties of the smooth muscle, impairing the normal control of blood pressure, but there are also numerous other issues that arise. For example, smooth muscle cells can begin to take on the characteristics of bone cells, and deposit calcium into the vascular wall. This calcification contributes to stiffening of vessels, leading to hypertension and accumulating pressure damage to tissues throughout the body. How vascular smooth muscle cell phenotype switching contributes to vascular disease Vascular smooth muscle cells ...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs