TY - JOUR
T1 - Impact of sex and age on metabolism, sympathetic activity, and hypertension
AU - Yoo, Jeung Ki
AU - Fu, Qi
N1 - Funding Information:
This brief review was supported, in part, by the National Institutes of Health (R01HL091078 and R21HL088184) and the American Heart Association Grant‐in‐Aid (13GRNT16990064) awards. Jeung‐Ki Yoo is supported by the American Heart Association post‐doctoral fellowship grant (19POST34380615).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology
PY - 2020/9/1
Y1 - 2020/9/1
N2 - In this brief review, we summarize the current knowledge on the complex interplay between metabolism, sympathetic activity and hypertension with a focus on sex differences and changes with age in humans. Evidence suggests that in premenopausal women, sex hormones, particularly estrogen exerts a profound cardioprotective effect which may be associated with favorable metabolic profiles, as well as lower sympathetic activity and blood pressure at rest and any given physiological and environmental stimuli compared with men of a similar age. Along this line, premenopausal women seem to be generally protected from obesity-induced metabolic and cardiovascular complications. However, postmenopausal estrogen deprivation during midlife and older age has a detrimental impact on metabolism, may lead to adipose tissue redistribution from the subcutaneous to abdominal area, and augments sympathetic activity. All these changes could contribute significantly to the higher prevalence of hypertension and greater cardiometabolic risk in older women than older men. It is proposed that obesity-related hypertension has a neurogenic component which is characterized by sympathetic overactivity, but the impact of sex and age remains largely unknown. Understanding sex and age-specific differences in obesity and sympathetic neural control of blood pressure is important in the prevention and/or risk reduction of cardiometabolic disorders for both men and women.
AB - In this brief review, we summarize the current knowledge on the complex interplay between metabolism, sympathetic activity and hypertension with a focus on sex differences and changes with age in humans. Evidence suggests that in premenopausal women, sex hormones, particularly estrogen exerts a profound cardioprotective effect which may be associated with favorable metabolic profiles, as well as lower sympathetic activity and blood pressure at rest and any given physiological and environmental stimuli compared with men of a similar age. Along this line, premenopausal women seem to be generally protected from obesity-induced metabolic and cardiovascular complications. However, postmenopausal estrogen deprivation during midlife and older age has a detrimental impact on metabolism, may lead to adipose tissue redistribution from the subcutaneous to abdominal area, and augments sympathetic activity. All these changes could contribute significantly to the higher prevalence of hypertension and greater cardiometabolic risk in older women than older men. It is proposed that obesity-related hypertension has a neurogenic component which is characterized by sympathetic overactivity, but the impact of sex and age remains largely unknown. Understanding sex and age-specific differences in obesity and sympathetic neural control of blood pressure is important in the prevention and/or risk reduction of cardiometabolic disorders for both men and women.
KW - blood pressure
KW - cardiometabolic risk
KW - muscle sympathetic nerve activity
KW - obesity
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U2 - 10.1096/fj.202001006RR
DO - 10.1096/fj.202001006RR
M3 - Review article
C2 - 32779294
AN - SCOPUS:85089258233
SN - 0892-6638
VL - 34
SP - 11337
EP - 11346
JO - FASEB Journal
JF - FASEB Journal
IS - 9
ER -