Researchers here provide evidence to show that measures of skin aging sensitive to the progression of fibrosis appear to correlate with the risk of suffering conductive disorders of cardiac tissue. The heart is an electrochemical machine, and electrical properties of heart tissue such as the atrioventricular node are vital to the way in which the organ functions. Fibrosis in heart tissue disrupts these electrical properties, just as it disrupts any function of tissue that depends on its fine structure.

Fibrosis is the creation of scar-like deposits in place of normal tissue structure, the result of an age-related disruption of normal regenerative and tissue maintenance processes. It is thought that chronic inflammation and the presence of senescent cells are among the more important causes of fibrosis, though the authors of this paper prefer to focus on cross-linking of AGEs, and these are global issues in the aging body. So while any observed correlation between aspects of aging must be eyed carefully, simply because aging is a collection of interacting processes that all happen at the same time, it is at least plausible that increased prevalence of fibrosis throughout the body is a mechanism to produce the observed results here.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1002/clc.22848