The Aging Heart: Figure 1.

Aging results in progressive deteriorations in the structure and function of the heart and is a dominant risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, the leading cause of death in Western populations.Although the phenotypes of cardiac aging have been well characterized, the molecular mechanisms of cardiac aging are just beginning to be revealed.With the continuously growing elderly population, there is a great need for interventions in cardiac aging.This article will provide an overview of the phenotypic changes of cardiac aging, the molecular mechanisms underlying these changes, and will present some of the recent advances in the development of interventions to delay or reverse cardiac aging.C ardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death in most developed nations.Although it has received the least public attention, aging is by far the dominant risk factor for development cardiovascular diseases, as the prevalence of cardiovascular diseases increases dramatically with increasing age.The prevalence rate of cardiovascular diseases is .70%for Americans 60 to 79 years of age and .80%for Americans .80 years of age (Go et al. 2014).Even without associated systemic risk factors, intrinsic cardiac aging leads to structural and functional deteriorations of the heart in elderly individuals.Therefore, interventions to combat cardiac aging will not only improve healthspan(definition) of the elderly but can also extend lifespan by delaying cardiovascular disease-related deaths.Although there is presently no treatment for cardiac aging, recent advances in the understanding of the mechanisms of cardiac aging have provided new insights, and we are now poised on the threshold of development of new interventions to attenuate or reverse cardiac aging.