Response of the senescent heart to stress: clinical therapeutic strategies and quest for mitochondrial predictors of biological age.

The aging heart has an impaired response to many kinds of stress. In clinical practice, there is a need for senescence-specific therapies to protect against stress and for biochemical markers of senescence to identify those patients most in need of therapy. In isolated rat hearts, in human tissues, and in a clinical trial, we have shown previously that coenzyme Q(10) has the ability to protect the heart against stress especially in senescence.