The impact of metabolic disorders on ageing rates in patients with moderate cardiovascular risk

Abstract

Introduction. Prediction of cardiovascular risk (CVR) and the effectiveness of prevention of metabolic-associated diseases (MAD) is a serious challenge of modern medicine. Recently, for this purpose, it has been proposed to estimate the biological age (BA) of a person for the timely determination of premature aging. Calendar age (CA) is an important risk factor for the development of age-related diseases, including cardiovascular disease (CVD). Biological age (BA) may be more accurate for assessing CVR and predicting early vascular ageing and the development of atherosclerosis. The available data allow us to testify about the relationship between premature aging and the most significant pathogenetic factors of MAD. Purpose: to assess the impact of metabolic disorders on biological age in patients with moderate cardiovascular risk and the significance for the development of premature ageing. Materials and methods. 120 patients with moderate CVR (by SCORE) aged from 32 to 59 years (women n=65, 54.17%) were involved in the examination. They were divided into the main group (n= 67) who additionally had metabolic disorders (overweight/obesity, insulin resistance, dyslipidemia) and a comparison group (n=53) without metabolic disorders. All included patients underwent anthropometric studies with calculation of body mass index (BMI), studies of indicators of carbohydrate metabolism and lipid metabolism. Determination of biological age was carried out according to the methods of A.G. Gorelkin and B.B. Pinkhasov and P.V. Voytenko. Telomere length (TL) of blood leukocytes and buccal epithelium was determined by real-time PCR. Statistical data processing was performed using the Statistica program package, version 10.0. Results and discussion. The BA of normal-weight patients not only did not exceed the CA, but was also lower in both the main group and the comparison group. At the same time, in the overweight patients BA did not differ from CA in both groups, and the presence of obesity led to an acceleration of the rate of ageing in patients of the main group. It was determined that an increase in BMI and waist circumference (WC), hyperinsulinemia, hyperuricemia, and high levels of proatherogenic lipids are associated with an increase in BA regardless of the presence of metabolic disorders and may influence the ageing rate. Also, the presence of overweight and obesity is associated with a decrease in TL and an increase in BA. Conclusions. Assessment of premature ageing allows to identify persons with a high risk of developing age-related diseases at a time when there are no clinical symptoms yet, and to develop measures for timely and effective prevention.