Effect of age on hypertrophy of the rat heart following infarction

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Abstract
To separate the physiologic process of growth from the pathologic process of hypertrophy in rat hearts with myocardial infarction, we compared 32 young, actively-growing rats (initial age 7 weeks) with 45 mature, slowly-growing rats (initial age 18 wecks). Animals were sacrificed five weeks after induction of infarction. During this period, young animals had a 58% increase in body weight and mature animals an 8% increase (p<0.001). Cardiac hypertrophy was directly demonstrated by an increase in cell diameter, in both young and mature animals with more than 15% of the left ventricle infarcted (8.5±0.8 μm in controls vs. 10.2±1.4 μm in infarcted rats, p0.2). Therefore, cardiac hypertrophy following infarction in rats is not dependent upon age.