Peculiarities of Cardiohemodynamics and its Autonomic Regulation in Elderly People

Abstract

The study was aimed to the experimental verification of the authors’ hypothesis that in elderly people an endogenous functional mechanism develops during late ontogeny to protect muscle effectors of the cardiovascular system (CVS) against negative effects of excessive activity of the sympathetic nervous system by partial replacement of its neurotransmitter norepinephrine with humoral catecholamines. Experiments were carried out using our original method of arterial piezopulsometry which allows evaluation of cardiohemodynamic parameters, as well as the spectral power of oscillations of V_maxPP and TNN parameters of arterial blood pressure pulse waves caused by regulatory effects of the autonomic nervous and endocrine systems. Such a replacement is assumed to be crucial for raising the metabolic tolerance of the CVS in elderly people to an age-related increase in oxygen deficiency, as well as for reducing the incidence of tachyarrhythmia, stenocardia and other cardiac pathological conditions under the influence of psychoemotional and physical stressors.