Heterogeneous ageing of skeletal muscle microvascular function

The distribution of blood flow to skeletal muscle during exercise is altered with advancing age. Changes in arteriolar function that are muscle specific underlie age-induced changes in blood flow distribution. With advancing age, functional adaptations that occur in resistance arterioles from oxidative muscles differ from those that occur in glycolytic muscles. Age-related adaptations of morphology, as well as changes in both endothelial and vascular smooth muscle signalling, differ in muscle of diverse fibre type. Age-induced endothelial dysfunction has been reported in most skeletal muscle arterioles; however, unique alterations in signalling contribute to the dysfunction in arterioles from oxidative muscles as compared with those from glycolytic muscles. In resistance arterioles from oxidative muscle, loss of nitric oxide signalling contributes significantly to endothelial dysfunction, whereas in resistance arterioles from glycolytic muscle, alterations in both nitric oxide and prostanoid signalling underlie endothelial dysfunction. Similarly, adaptations of the vascular smooth muscle that occur with advancing age are heterogeneous between arterioles from oxidative and glycolytic muscles. In both oxidative and glycolytic muscle, late-life exercise training reverses age-related microvascular dysfunction, and exercise training appears to be particularly effective in reversing endothelial dysfunction. Patterns of microvascular ageing that develop among muscles of diverse fibre type and function may be attributable to changing patterns of physical activity with ageing. Importantly, aerobic exercise training, initiated even at an advanced age, restores muscle blood flow distribution patterns and vascular function in old animals to those seen in their young counterparts.