Copyright © 2005, European Society of Cardiology
Aging hearts and vessels: Masters of adaptation and survival
aLaboratory of Cardiac Surgical Research, Alfred Hospital, Wynn Department of Metabolic Cardiology, Baker Heart Research Institute, Department of Surgery, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
bLaboratory of Cardiovascular Science, Intramural Research Program, National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, Gerontology Research Center, Baltimore, USA
* Corresponding author. Laboratory of Cardiac Surgical Research, Alfred Hospital and Baker Heart Research Institute, POB 6492 St. Kilda Rd. Central, Melbourne, VIC 8008, Australia. Tel.: +61 3 85321310; fax: +61 3 85321314. Email address: spepe@baker.edu.au
Received 4 March 2005; accepted 7 March 2005
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Aging has become one of the most critical issues for industrialised nations, because population average age, and thus the incidence of age-associated disease, has markedly risen to create a major burden as patients draw heavily on the need for continuing medical treatment and hospital and other community services. Despite major advances in medicine in recent years, cardiovascular disease remains the greatest cause of morbidity and mortality. Age, per se, confers the major risk for cardiovascular disease because specific pathophysiological mechanisms that underlie these diseases become superimposed on cardiac and vascular substrates that have been modified by the "aging process" [1–3].
In healthy humans rigorously screened to exclude cardiovascular disease, non-human primates, and rodents, the large elastic arteries become dilated and stiffen and the intima thickens and exhibits cellular and sub-cellular features that resemble those that occur during vascular inflammation and injury [1]. Age-associated changes in cardiac structure (increased
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