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a) Representative nitric oxide pathway.b) Effects of aging on nitric oxide pathway. BH4 = tetrahydrobiopterin; Ca2+ = calcium ion; cGMP = cyclic guanosine monophosphate; eNOS = endothelial nitric oxide synthase; GTP = guanosine triphosphate; NADPH = nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate; NO = nitric oxide; ONOO- = Peroxynitrite; ADMA = Dimethylarginine; ROS = reactive oxygen species.

a) Representative nitric oxide pathway.b) Effects of aging on nitric oxide pathway. BH4 = tetrahydrobiopterin; Ca2+ = calcium ion; cGMP = cyclic guanosine monophosphate; eNOS = endothelial nitric oxide synthase; GTP = guanosine triphosphate; NADPH = nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate; NO = nitric oxide; ONOO- = Peroxynitrite; ADMA = Dimethylarginine; ROS = reactive oxygen species.

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Aging is the sum of the deleterious changes that occur as time goes by. It is the main risk factor for the development of cardiovascular disease, and aging of the vasculature is the event that most often impacts on the health of elderly people. The "free-radical theory of aging" was proposed to explain aging as a consequence of the accumulation of...

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... dysfunction is the hallmark of vascular damage in advancing age [37][38][39][40][41]. Many functions of the vascular endothelium are modulated by NO, which is able to induce smooth muscle relaxation [42][43][44], the inhibition of platelet aggregation [45], leukocyte adhe- sion to endothelial cells [46,47] and preservation of endothelial progenitor cell function [48] (Figure 1a). The crucial role of NO in protecting the cardiovascular system during aging was revealed by studies demon- strating that eNOS knockout mice have a premature cardiac-aging phenotype and early mortality [49]. ...
Context 2
... of NO availability alters vascular homeosta- sis [50] and is a phenomenon involved in the de- velopment of hypertension [50,51], atherosclerosis and thrombosis leading to heart attack and stroke [52][53][54]. The mechanisms underlying vascular aging are complex and involve multiple pathways [41,55,56] (Figure 1b). During aging, there is a progressive misbalance between NO production − which becomes increasingly reduced − and oxidative stress − which increases without a com- pensatory enhancement of antioxidant defences [57][58][59]. ...

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