Clinical Interventions in Aging (Feb 2018)
Vascular aging processes accelerate following a cubic kinetic: pulse wave velocity as an objective counterpart that time, as we age, goes by faster
Abstract
Luca Gabutti, Rosaria Del Giorno Department of Internal Medicine and Nephrology, Bellinzona Regional Hospital, Bellinzona, SwitzerlandArterial stiffness is a marker of vascular aging and is considered to be the most reliable parameter expressing, like an integral in mathematics, the cumulative consequences, on the vascular wall, of degenerative and adaptive changes occurring throughout life.1 The efficiency of the reparative processes, the cardiovascular risk factors (CVRF), and early life and genetic determinants, all play a relevant role.1 Among CVRF, the acceleration in arterial stiffness progression related to age is mainly influenced by hypertension.1 A pathological acceleration translates into the concept of early vascular aging, a concept that can be quantified calculating the gap between the subject’s chronological (estimated on the basis of the epidemiological data obtained in the normal population) and effective vascular age.2 Data of subpopulations without active risk factors for accelerated vascular aging can be found mainly in three large epidemiological studies, performed respectively in Portugal,3 Argentina,4 and seven different European countries (Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, and UK) gathered in a collaborative investigation.5 Those doing this secondary analysis were aware of the limitation related to the use of cross-sectional data to extrapolate longitudinal changes, and their aims were combining the abovementioned epidemiological data concerning the normal population to calculate with the highest possible accuracy 1) the age-related increase in acceleration of the pulse wave velocity (PWV) and to estimate both 2) the age-specific relative amount of time equivalent to that necessary to progress 1 year in vascular age at 20, and 3) the cumulative relative age calculated in year equivalents.
