New heart finding linked with major health conditions in older age

The way the body responds to standing up can impact health in older age, surprising new research has found.

Researchers discovered around one third of people experience a significant drop in cardiovascular output, or the amount of blood pumped around the body per minute, when they stand up.

The unexpected cardiovascular discovery, published in the European Heart Journal, was first observed as part of a practical exercise involving more than 3000 University of Melbourne medical students, who took part in the research.

The study’s lead, University of Melbourne Professor Emeritus Stephen Harrap from the Department of Anatomy and Physiology, and a clinician at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, explained the research.

“We wanted medical students to understand what happens to blood pressure just as we stand up because low pressure is associated with falls and significant injury. By chance, we discovered that not everyone responds the same way,” Professor Harrap said.

“Although the blood pumped by the heart increased briefly in most students as they stood, in a third it fell transiently instead and blood pressure fell significantly more. Further studies showed that the nervous system responsible for the fight-flight response communicated differently with the heart and blood vessels in the two groups.”

The longer term potential health implications of this drop were then revealed in a study of more than 3000 older adults as part of The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA).

The findings were  validated by researchers in Trinity College, Dublin, who also observed the same in the participants of the TILDA study.

“With the help of research partners in Ireland, we found the same cardiovascular patterns in older people. Importantly, the transient fall pattern was associated with common heart disease and diabetes as well as impaired mobility, frailty, cognitive impairment and increased falls risk,” he said.

“We hope that technologies such as wearable devices and AI might make detection of these patterns part of routine clinical practice, so that doctors and patients can take appropriate measures to detect this novel predisposition and avoid health problems as people grow older.”

The medical students in the Melbourne group took part in the trial between 2011 and 2019, with an average age of 22.

“This was an interesting and unexpected finding that was revealed in part thanks to the medical students who took part in this study,” he said.