Role of diet in cardiac aging and fibrosis

Calorie restriction (CR) improved healthspan in two longitudinal studies in nonhuman primates (NHPs), yet only the University of Wisconsin (UW) study demonstrated an increase in survival in CR monkeys relative to controls; the National Institute on Aging (NIA) study did not. Here, analysis of left ventricle samples showed that CR did not reduce cardiac fibrosis relative to controls. However, there was a 5.9-fold increase of total fibrosis in UW hearts, compared to NIA. Diet composition was a prominent difference between the studies; therefore, we used the NHP diets to characterize diet-associated molecular and functional changes in the hearts of mice. Consistent with the findings from the NHP samples, mice fed UW or a modified NIA diet with increased sucrose and fat developed greater cardiac fibrosis compared to the NIA diet, and transcriptomics analysis revealed diet-induced activation of myocardial oxidative phosphorylation and cardiac muscle contraction pathways. 4 cohorts of mice were administered NIA, UW, chow or modified- NIA diet for a period of 6 months. Hearts were harvested and RNA was extracted from the ventricles for bulk RNA-seq on Illumina NextSeq.