Chronic cold exposure causes left ventricular hypertrophy that appears to be physiological.

ABSTRACT: Exposure to winter cold causes an increase in energy demands to meet the challenge of thermoregulation. In small rodents, this increase in cardiac output leads to a profound cardiac hypertrophy, 2-3 times that typically seen with exercise training. The nature of this hypertrophy and its relevance to winter mortality remains unclear. Our goal was to characterize cold-induced cardiac hypertrophy and to assess its similarity to either exercise-induced (physiological) hypertrophy or the pathological hypertrophy of hypertension. We hypothesized that cold-induced hypertrophy will most closely resemble exercise-induced hypertrophy, but be another unique pathway for physiological cardiac growth. We found that cold-induced hypertrophy was largely reversed after a return to warm temperatures. Furthe

SUBMITTER: Burns MPA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11529882 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature