Assessment of the Effects of Age, Gender, and Exercise Training on the Cardiac Sympathetic Nervous System Using Positron Emission Tomography Imaging

Abstract

With age, presynaptic uptake as measured by PSnt declines, but there were no differences in β'max. Endurance training significantly increased VO2 max but did not cause any changes in the measures of cardiac sympathetic nervous system function. These findings suggest that significant changes do not occur or that current PET imaging methods may be inadequate to measure small serial differences in a highly reproducible manner.

The Impact of Ageing on 11C-Hydroxyephedrine Uptake in the Rat Heart

“…recently compared a younger patient cohort (18–33 y) vs. an older cohort (65–80 y) and reported on a decline in cardiac sympathetic nerve function assessed by 11C-HED PET. Although extrapolations from preclinical observations to humans must be done with extreme caution, the herein presented age-related decrease of sympathetic nerve function in the rat myocardium corroborates these previously reported findings 45 . However, due to the preclinical setting of the present study, the same rat could be imaged at different time points of its life, which might be comparable to different stages in a human life cycle 46 : M2 in a rat life corresponds approximately to early/middle childhood (human age, 6 y), M5 to adolescence (12–20 y), M11 to early adulthood/ midlife (35–50 y) and M15 to mature adulthood (50–70 y).…”

“…Hence, in contrast to Bernacki et al . selecting two extremes (adolescence vs. late adulthood) 45 , the present study not only reports on significant differences in cardiac nerve function between young and old (M2 vs. M15 group), but also on an age-dependent loss of myocardial innervation over the life span of a healthy rat.…”

Myocardial blood flow and myocardial flow reserve values in 13N–ammonia myocardial perfusion PET/CT using a time-efficient protocol in patients without coronary artery disease

“…One explanation could be that female patients are more susceptible to mental stress before procedure (Marques et al 2016 ), which would explain the increased RPP compared to males, resulting in increased MBF. Age had a small but significant negative correlation with global stress MBF and MFR, but previous studies have been contradictory on this matter (Bernacki et al 2016 ; Czernin et al 1993 ). The decline in the present study may be explained by a progression of coronary microvascular disease with age (Marinescu et al 2015 ), by an increase of risk factors by age, or by currently unknown factors.…”

A change of heart: Mechanisms of cardiac adaptation to acute and chronic hypoxia

“…However, an increased focus on sex‐related differences amongst cardiovascular physiologists has at least helped to identify key regulators of cardiac function amongst the female vs . male hearts (Bernacki et al., 2016; Burger et al., 2018; Jarvis et al., 2011; Lindenfeld et al., 2016; Salem et al., 2018; Simone et al., 1991; Tsuchimochi et al., 1995; Usselman et al., 2016; Williams et al., 2016, 2017, 2018), which may be important in the context of hypoxia and successful acclimatization and adaptation to high altitude environments.…”

“…Although such research gaps in female physiology continue to be narrowed, remarkably little is known about the female heart in hypoxia, spanning the range of acclimation, acclimatization and lifelong adaptation. However, an increased focus on sex-related differences amongst cardiovascular physiologists has at least helped to identify key regulators of cardiac function amongst the female vs. male hearts (Bernacki et al, 2016;Burger et al, 2018;Jarvis et al, 2011;Lindenfeld et al, 2016;Salem et al, 2018;Simone et al, 1991;Tsuchimochi et al, 1995;Usselman et al, 2016;Williams et al, 2016Williams et al, , 2017Williams et al, , 2018, which may be important in the context of hypoxia and successful acclimatization and adaptation to high altitude environments.…”