Circadian biology of cardiac aging

Abstract

The age of the U.S. population is increasing alongside a growing burden of age-related cardiovascular disease. Circadian rhythms are critical for human health and are disrupted with aging and cardiovascular disease. The goal of the present review is to summarize how cardiac circadian rhythms change with age and how this might contribute to the increasing burden of age-associated heart disease. Further, we will review what is known about interventions to slow aging and whether they impact cardiac clock function, as well as whether time-of-day or chronotherapy may improve cardiac function with age. Although much remains to be understood about the circadian biology of cardiac aging, we propose that altered circadian clock output should be considered a hallmark of aging and that efforts to fix the clock are warranted for healthy cardiac aging.