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- Title
Inflammation and ageing.
- Authors
U. Müller-Werdan
- Abstract
Abstract An enhanced inflammatory state – i.e. “inflammatory/pathogen burden” – in the elderly on the one hand results from physiological immunosenescence and on the other hand is modified by the individual immune history: the latter is determined by sequential infectious/pathogenic events (“multiple hits”). Immunosenescence may prompt ageing of other organs. Cardiac ageing can be assessed by analysing heart rate variability. We present our hypothesis that the increasing “inflammatory/pathogen burden” of each organism during a lifetime significantly contributes to the cardiac ageing process. This hypothesis is grounded on the fact that a characteristic feature of the ageing heart – a narrowed heart rate variability – can be experimentally induced in humans by an inflammatory stimulus (endotoxin).
- Subjects
AGING; GERONTOLOGY; OLD age; HEART beat
- Publication
Zeitschrift für Gerontologie und Geriatrie, 2007, Vol 40, Issue 5, p362
- ISSN
0948-6704
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s00391-007-0486-7