Sympathetic neuronal regulation of the heart in aging and heart failure

The documentation of preferential activation of the cardiac sympathetic outflow in patients with heart failure swept aside an entrenched notion that there was a functional sympathetic denervation of the failing heart and provided a theoretical basis for the clinical evaluation of beta-adrenergic blocker therapy in this condition. The demonstration that heightened sympathetic nervous system activity is central to the pathogenesis and progression of congestive heart failure (CHF) has now led to the rational use of beta-adrenoceptor blockade in CHF. More recently, it has also emerged that the aging heart exhibits some of the characteristic changes in autonomic control which are seen in CHF. Accordingly, alterations in cardiac sympathetic nerve function are now thought to contribute also to the pathophysiology of the aging heart. Furthermore, there is evidence that in humans, sympathoexcitatory rostral projections of brainstem noradrenergic neurons to the forebrain are important in the sympathetic nervous activation of both heart failure and aging. Given these similarities, in this review we compare and contrast the neurobiology of the sympathetic nervous system in the failing heart and the healthy, aging heart, and consider whether the sympathetic activation accompanying aging may, perhaps, underlie and contribute to the neural pathophysiology of heart failure. Our conclusion is, on balance, that this proposition is not supported by the available evidence.