FEATURED EDITORIAL

Biological ageing and cardiovascular disease

Nilesh J Samani¹, Pim van der Harst²

¹ Department of Cardiovascular Sciences, University of Leicester, Glenfield Hospital, Leicester, UK
² Department of Cardiology, University Medical Centre Groningen, University of Groningen, The Netherlands

Correspondence to:
Professor N J Samani, Department of Cardiovascular Sciences, University of Leicester, Clinical Sciences Wing, Glenfield Hospital, Groby Road, Leicester LE3 9QP, UK; njs@le.ac.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

At a population level, several environmental, lifestyle and genetic risk factors contribute to the development of coronary artery disease (CAD) and heart failure. However, at an individual level, both susceptibility to, and the age of onset of, these conditions vary considerably even for subjects with apparently similar risk factor profiles. Any mechanism that is proposed to explain this interindividual variation needs to take into account the age association of these diseases (ie, that they are more common with age) and integrate the impact of known risk factors. Here we discuss emerging evidence that suggests that at least part of the interindividual difference in susceptibility to, and in age of onset of, CAD, and possibly other cardiovascular diseases including heart failure, reflects interindividual variation in biological ageing and that mean telomere length acts as a valuable marker of this process.

TELOMERES

Telomeres are the extreme ends of eukaryotic chromosomes. They are made . . . [Full text of this article]

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

• van der Harst, P., de Boer, R. A., van Veldhuisen, D. J. (2009). The Nobel Prize for medicine for telomere biology and relevance to heart failure research. Eur J Heart Fail 11: 1113-1115 [Full Text]  
• Vasan, R. S., Demissie, S., Kimura, M., Cupples, L. A., White, C., Gardner, J. P., Cao, X., Levy, D., Benjamin, E. J., Aviv, A. (2009). Association of Leukocyte Telomere Length With Echocardiographic Left Ventricular Mass: The Framingham Heart Study. Circulation 120: 1195-1202 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Aviv, A. (2009). Leukocyte telomere length: the telomere tale continues. Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 89: 1721-1722 [Full Text]  
• Mukherjee, M, Brouilette, S, Stevens, S, Shetty, K R, Samani, N J (2009). Association of shorter telomeres with coronary artery disease in Indian subjects. Heart 95: 669-673 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Matsumoto, Y., Adams, V., Walther, C., Kleinecke, C., Brugger, P., Linke, A., Walther, T., Mohr, F. W., Schuler, G. (2009). Reduced number and function of endothelial progenitor cells in patients with aortic valve stenosis: a novel concept for valvular endothelial cell repair. Eur Heart J 30: 346-355 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Wong, L. S.M., Oeseburg, H., de Boer, R. A., van Gilst, W. H., van Veldhuisen, D. J., van der Harst, P. (2009). Telomere biology in cardiovascular disease: the TERC-/- mouse as a model for heart failure and ageing. Cardiovasc Res 81: 244-252 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Oeseburg, H., Iusuf, D., van der Harst, P., van Gilst, W. H., Henning, R. H., Roks, A. J.M. (2009). Bradykinin Protects Against Oxidative Stress-Induced Endothelial Cell Senescence. Hypertension 53: 417-422 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Wong, L. S.M., de Boer, R. A., Samani, N. J., van Veldhuisen, D. J., van der Harst, P. (2008). Telomere biology in heart failure. Eur J Heart Fail 10: 1049-1056 [Abstract] [Full Text]