Evidence for Loss of Capillary Density to be Important in Heart Disease

Loss of capillary density, and thus flow of blood through tissues, is a known feature of aging, though the causes of this change in tissue maintenance are far from completely explored. It is proposed to be quite important in loss of tissue function, particularly in organs with high metabolic demands, such as muscle and the brain. Researchers here provide evidence to suggest that this loss of capillary density is a noteworthy mediating mechanism linking the age-related impairment of heart function with the presence of chronic kidney disease. The latter is already known to correlate with impaired capillary structure in the heart, and here data from patients shows that this is a factor in the progression to heart disease. People with chronic kidney disease have a higher risk for heart disease and heart-disease death. Coronary microvascular dysfunction, or CMD, is decreased blood flow in the small blood vessels inside the heart muscle that provide oxygen and fuel to feed the pumping heart. A new study links kidney disease to progressive heart disease via this mechanism. In healthy hearts, visualized postmortem, these blood vessels look like a tight filigree network that fills the heart muscle tissue. A diseased postmortem heart has lost much of this network. In living patients, however, those small blood vessels inside the heart muscle cannot be visualized; blood flow scans of living patients visualize only the larger, exterior coronary arteries. Thus researchers ...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs