A Review of Vascular Aging
An open access paper: "'Man is as old as his arteries.' This old aphorism has been widely confirmed by epidemiological and observational studies establishing that cardiovascular diseases can be age-related in terms of their onset and progression. Besides, with aging come a number of physiological and morphological changes that alters cardiovascular function and lead to subsequently increased risk of cardiovascular disease, even in health asymptomatic individuals. Even though different adaptive mechanisms to protect blood vessels against mild stress have been described, the aging process induces a progressive failure of protective mechanisms, leading to vascular changes. The outcomes of the aging-related modifications are the impairment of homeostasis of the irrigated organs and resultant target organ damage. The increasing mean age of the population in industrialized countries has turned out to be an economic and public health problem, as the increase in life expectancy goes in parallel with high incidence of several pathological conditions, despite unprecedented advances in prevention, diagnostics, and treatment. Of all aging-related illness, cardiovascular diseases remain the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the elderly, and thus it is imperative to understand the mechanism underlying cardiovascular senescence."