Where heart ageing begins: vessels discovered as a weak point
New study shows where the decisive changes of ageing take place in the heart tissue.
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Why the heart loses elasticity with age and becomes more susceptible to disease is still only partially understood. Researchers at Goethe University Frankfurt, the Cardiopulmonary Institute (CPI) and the German Center for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK) have now shown that the decisive processes take place primarily in the vicinity of blood vessels. These so-called vascular niches are the places where inflammation, cell ageing and remodeling processes begin in the heart tissue.
For the study, which has been published in Circulation Research, the team led by first author David Rodriguez Morales and last author Stefanie Dimmeler analyzed the hearts of young and old mice using state-of-the-art single-cell and tissue technologies. They identified eleven different microenvironments in the heart tissue that differ in terms of their cell composition and activity. The areas close to the blood vessels were particularly strongly altered: Ageing cells accumulate there, which send out inflammatory signals and solidify the tissue.
Symbolic image: Ageing processes begin in the vascular network.
AI-generated / © DZHK)
Hotspots of inflammation
"Our data suggest that the ageing of the heart begins at the vessels, so to speak," says David Rodriguez Morales. "These niches act like small hotspots that trigger inflammation and remodeling processes, which then spread to the entire organ."
The team also tested whether this process could be stopped. In old mice that were treated with so-called senolytics - substances that specifically remove ageing cells - certain inflammatory cells in the vascular niches decreased. This could indicate that therapies that target these microenvironments protect the heart in old age.
"Ageing is not a uniform process that affects the whole heart," says Stefanie Dimmeler. "Rather, it seems to originate in specific areas. This finding opens up new opportunities to intervene specifically where the damage occurs."
The study thus provides a basis for better understanding age-related changes in the cardiovascular system in the future and influencing them therapeutically.
Note: This article has been translated using a computer system without human intervention. LUMITOS offers these automatic translations to present a wider range of current news. Since this article has been translated with automatic translation, it is possible that it contains errors in vocabulary, syntax or grammar. The original article in German can be found here.
Original publication
David Rodriguez Morales, Veronica Larcher, Mariano Ruz Jurado, Denada Arifaj, Lukas Tombor, Lukas Zanders, Andreas M. Zeiher, Christoph Kuppe, David John, Julian U.G. Wagner, Marcel H. Schulz, Stefanie Dimmeler; "Vascular Niches Are the Primary Hotspots in Cardiac Aging"; Circulation Research, 2025-10-15
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