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Aging News & Information
More Bad News for Senior Citizens - Veins Stiffen as
We Age
Factor in high blood
pressure, which affects about 65 million Americans, most of them older
adults
By
Tracey Bryant
 October
31, 2006 - As if creaking joints and hardening of the arteries weren't
bad enough, a research team from the University of Delaware and the
Christiana Care Health System in Newark has now confirmed that even our
veins stiffen as we age.
When you are young, your veins are nice and
elastic--like rubber bands, William Farquhar, a cardiovascular
physiologist in UD's College of Health Sciences, said. But as you grow
older, we've found that your veins become more like lead pipes.
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And that physiological change may be an important
factor in the development of high blood pressure, or hypertension, which
currently affects an estimated 65 million Americans, most of them older
adults, according to Farquhar.
The study, which was conducted over the past two
years, was led by Farquhar and Colin Young from the University of
Delaware and Michael Stillabower and Angela Disabatino at Christiana
Care Health System. The results are published in the November issue of
the Journal of Applied Physiology.
Young recently completed his bachelor's and
master's degrees at UD, with Farquhar as his adviser, and is now
pursuing a doctorate in physiology and pharmacology at the University of
Missouri. Stillabower is a cardiologist and director of cardiovascular
research at Christiana Care Health System, as well as a clinical
associate professor of medicine at Jefferson Medical College in
Philadelphia. DiSabatino is the nurse manager at Christiana Care's
cardiovascular research office.
While the arterial side of the human circulatory
system has been studied extensively, Farquhar said much less research
has been conducted on the venous system. Yet the veins contain
approximately 70 percent of your body's total blood volume when you are
at rest, and the flexibility of these blood vessels is a major factor in
how much blood gets returned to your heart during the vital fluid's
journey through your circulatory system.
Every minute, the steady beating of that amazing
living pump--your heart--sends about five quarts of blood through the
60,000-mile network of arteries, capillaries and veins in your body. The
muscular arteries carry blood away from the heart and out to your organs
and limbs. Microscopic capillaries connect the arteries to the veins.
The veins then transport the blood back to the heart.
The veins are equipped with valves to prevent any
backflow of blood caused by gravity as blood is returned to the heart
from the lower extremities. The walls of the veins are made of collagen
and elastin, two proteins that give the tube-like blood vessels
flexibility and help them to maintain your blood pressure.
To determine if there are age-related differences
in how our veins work, the research team recruited 24 people for their
study--12 healthy young adults between the ages of 18 and 30, and 12
healthy older adults between 60 and 70 years old. Each individual
underwent medical screening at Christiana Hospital, which included a
lipid profile, blood pressure monitoring, electrocardiogram and several
other tests to ensure overall good health.
Then each participant was involved in a series of
research trials at UD's Human Performance Lab on the Newark campus.
While each subject lay resting on a gurney, various gauges, connected to
computers, were placed on their arms and legs. An arterial cuff was
attached to an upper arm to monitor blood pressure, and venous cuffs
were placed around the upper thigh and upper arm to measure the blood
flow to the limbs.
As the cuffs were inflated over an eight-minute
period, and then slowly deflated to let blood escape from the limbs, the
blood volume was measured, recorded, and graphed. The consistently lower
blood volume under pressure pointed to the less springy veins of the
older participants.
|
Your circulatory system consists of
your heart and blood vessels. Together, they provide a
continuous flow of blood to your body, supplying the tissues
with oxygen and nutrients. Arteries carry blood away from the
heart; veins return blood to the heart. |
Based on previous research, we suspected that the
veins of the older adults would be less flexible than those of the
younger adults, Farquhar said. But we didn't know if that might be due
to a functional process, such as a chronic constriction of the muscles
around the veins, or if this decreased flexibility was due to some
change in the structure of the veins themselves.
To find the answer, the researchers monitored the
blood flow through each participant's veins in different scenarios that
might constrict the veins, such as having one foot immersed in cold
water, or while squeezing a handgrip. They also administered a
nitroglycerin pill under the tongue of each participant to relax the
veins. In each case, they found that the tests had no effect on the
response of the veins in either age group.
Thus, we think that the stiffening of our veins as
we age is probably due to structural changes, such as a thickening of
the vein walls, Farquhar said. Hardening of the arteries is a good
analogy for what is happening in our veins as we grow older.
So can we do anything to keep our veins limber as
time marches on?
While there have been no longitudinal studies of
this yet, it's possible that regular exercise training may blunt
age-related increases in vein stiffness, Farquhar notes.
In the second phase of the UD study, now under way,
the research team wants to find out if the veins of people with high
pressure are stiffer than the veins of people with normal blood
pressure. Two doctoral students, Erin Delaney and Megan Wenner, are
assisting with this portion of the research, which will examine both
young and older adults with high blood pressure.
While high blood pressure is all too common among
older adults, Farquhar said it can be harder to find young adults who
already have the disease. However, several individuals already have been
identified for the study, and the team hopes to have data to report in
the next six months.
This research is both literally and figuratively
close to the heart for Farquhar. He said he has always had an interest
in cardiology and helping people.
Before his UD career, he worked with cardiac
patients in a rehabilitation setting, where he provided patients with
information about the risk factors affecting heart disease and the
benefits of exercise. Then, during his postdoctoral training at Boston's
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, he worked with patients who were
unable to stand without getting dizzy. And that began his research on
veins.
Today, he's busy working to find out what role
these less-studied blood vessels may play in high blood pressure.
Lots of people have high blood pressure, but we
still don't know the underlying cause of this disease, Farquhar said.
That's why we're pushing forward with these studies.
The UD research is supported by a $151,000 grant
from the National Institute on Aging, which is one of 27 institutes and
centers that compose the National Institutes of Health.
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