Aging Increases Susceptibility to Develop Cardiac Hypertrophy following High Sugar Consumption.

Aging and poor diet are independent risk factors for heart disease, but the impact of high-sucrose (HS) consumption in the aging heart is understudied. Aging leads to impairments in mitochondrial function that result in muscle dysfunction (e.g., cardiac remodeling and sarcopenia). We tested whether HS diet (60%kcal sucrose) would accelerate muscle dysfunction in 24-month-old male CB6F1 mice. By week 1 on HS diet, mice developed significant cardiac hypertrophy compared to age-matched chow-fed controls. The increased weight of the heart persisted throughout the 4-week treatment, while body weight and strength declined more rapidly than controls. We then tested whether HS diet could worsen cardiac dysfunction in old mice and if the mitochondrial-targeted drug, elamipretide (ELAM), could prevent the diet-induced effect. Old and young mice were treated with either ELAM or saline as a control for 2 weeks, and provided with HS diet or chow on the last week. As demonstrated in the previous experiment, old mice had age-related cardiac hypertrophy that worsened after one week on HS and was prevented by ELAM treatment, while the HS diet had no detectable effect on hypertrophy in the young mice. As expected, mitochondrial respiration and reactive oxygen species (ROS) production were altered by age, but were not significantly affected by HS diet or ELAM. Our findings highlight the vulnerability of the aged heart to HS diet that can be prevented by systemic targeting of the mitochondria with ELAM.