A Cellular Cause for Calcification of Blood Vessels

The publicity materials and paper linked below discuss the identification of a cell type and related mechanisms responsible for calcification of blood vessels. The focus is on the environment of kidney disease, and thus on kidney tissue, but we might hope that this has a broader relevance to the age-related calcification that occurs in all blood vessels over the years. The more that is known of blood vessel calcification, the better the odds that something might be done about it soon enough to matter for you and I. The deposition of calcium in blood vessel walls is considered to be an important contribution to the loss of elasticity in these tissues. The stiffening of blood vessels with age drives the development of hypertension, an increase in blood pressure. Hypertension and stiffening cause detrimental remodeling of heart tissue that leads towards heart failure, as well as ever greater breakage of tiny blood vessels, such as in the brain, where the resulting tissue damage produces cognitive decline. Most forms of age-related cardiovascular dysfunction are exacerbated by hypertension: the higher the blood pressure, the worse the long-term prognosis. While calcification in blood vessels is universally agreed to be a bad thing for the reasons given above, it is one of the many age-related changes for which there is no robustly defended line that can be drawn, leading through clearly demarcated steps, starting from an increase in fundamental forms of cell and tissue da...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs