People suffering from the advanced stages of heart disease have arteries that are biologically up to 40 years older than their real age, research led by Professor Martin Bennett at the University of Cambridge reveals.

The research, funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF), found that the more advanced the disease, the older the artery cells. “In early stages of heart disease, the arteries are between 5-15 years older than the person’s real age,” said Professor Martin Bennett, BHF Professor of Cardiovascular Sciences at the Department of Medicine.

“If you have mild heart disease and can limit your risk factors by stopping smoking, controlling hypertension and diabetes, and taking statins to lower cholesterol, you will slow this ageing process. If you do nothing, the cells can reach extreme old age very prematurely – and once they do that, the process cannot be reversed.”

The study, published in the journal Circulation Research, was a result of collaboration between Professor Bennett’s team and surgeons and pathologists from Papworth Hospital. It is the first in-depth study to use human tissue from heart bypass and transplant patients to map artery cell ageing.

The researchers studied the smooth muscle cells of diseased blood vessels, and identified accelerated telomere damage, which is a biological marker of ageing in the DNA of the cells.

Cells in the body can only divide a limited number of times. In patients with heart disease, their artery cells divide 7-13 times more often than normal and the cells run out of divisions, resulting in premature ageing of the arteries.

Older artery cells cannot repair properly, so do not function as well as younger ones. This makes them less capable of preventing fatty deposits called atherosclerotic plaques from forming, which can narrow the arteries and cause heart attacks.

“This is the first study that has mapped the extent of ageing in the artery. It’s like an archaeological dig. If you take a cross section of the artery, the further you dig down the more aged the cells are,” says Professor Bennett.

Researchers believe that the major risk factors that cause heart disease – high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, smoking, lack of exercise and poor diet – are responsible for the chemical damage that causes the premature ageing. “All these factors work through a final common pathway to prematurely age cells in the vessel wall,” says Professor Bennett.

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