“…This may be the consequence of the oxidative stress due to the increase in ROS production coupled with a decline in antioxidant defenses (Ferrara et al., 2008; Judge, Jang, Smith, & Hagen, 2005; Meng, Wong, Chen, & Ruan, 2007) prevailing in the aging heart. The observations that a mitochondria‐targeted ROS scavenger improved postischemic recovery of cardiac function (Escobales et al., 2014) and that the ROS scavenger Tempol restored pharmacological conditioning in aged rats (Zhu, Rebecchi, Glass, et al., 2013; Zhu, Rebecchi, Wang, et al., 2013) while preventing mPTP opening support this hypothesis.…”