Extracellular matrix remodeling in hypertensive heart disease.

everal decades ago, the severity of heart failure was gauged ccording to a depression in myocardial contractility, dened as that biochemical property of cardiac muscle that etermines the extent of shortening independent of its nitial length and the load against which it shortens. athematical models were used to derive indices of conractility (1). These theoretical constructs included a conractile element tethered to elastic elements that were ituated both in series and in parallel to it. Cardiomyocytes, ith their actin and myosin protein microfilaments, constiute the myocardium’s contractile elements, whereas fibrillar ollagen is the anatomic correlate of these elastic elements.