A Triple Mystery of Insidious Organ Failure: Are the Lung, Kidney and Brain All Damaged by the Ageing Pulse?

• Published in: Biomedicines Vol. 12; no. 9; p. 1969
• Main Authors: Stone, Jonathan, Robinson, Stephen R, Mitrofanis, John, Johnstone, Daniel M
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 01.09.2024; MDPI
• Subjects: Aging; Blood vessels; Brain; Brain damage; Capillaries; capillary haemorrhage; chronic kidney disease; Chronic kidney failure; Dementia; Dementia disorders; Development and progression; Failure; Fibrosis; healthy ageing; Hemorrhage; Hypertension; idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis; Kidney diseases; Lung diseases; Lungs; Medical treatment; Middle age; Neuropathology; Pathology; Proteins; Pulmonary fibrosis; Renal failure; Renal function; Review; Australia; capillary haemorrhage; dementia; chronic kidney disease; idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis; hypertension; healthy ageing
• DOI: 10.3390/biomedicines12091969
• ISSN: 2227-9059

This review explores the hypothesis that dementia in several forms, chronic kidney disease and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis have a common cause in pulse-induced capillary haemorrhage. All three conditions are age-related and characterised by insidious onset, uncertainty about their cause, exacerbation by hypertension, resistance to treatment and the relentlessness of their progression. We argue that the three conditions are the clinical outcomes of damage caused by pulse-induced haemorrhage from capillaries. The damage, first detectable in mid-life, creates first mild and then severe symptoms of cognitive, renal and pulmonary dysfunction. We also review evidence that in all three organs there has developed, by young adulthood, a reserve of tissue that enables them to function well, despite the 'heartbeat by heartbeat' damage that accumulates from early mid-life; and that it is when that reserve is exhausted, typically in late age, that symptoms of organ failure emerge and progress. If this common cause can be established, a step will have been taken towards the understanding, treatment and delay of three conditions that have their beginnings in every individual and that, in those who survive other causes of death, become lethal in late age.