Heavy-load exercise in older adults activates vasculogenesis and has a stronger impact on muscle gene expression than in young adults.

"availability of data and materials microarray data from the bsu cohort have been submitted to the geo database ( www ncbi nlm nih gov/geo/ ): gse28422 gse28392 and gse25941 . availability of data and materials microarray data from the bsu cohort have been submitted to the geo database ( www ncbi nlm nih gov/geo/ ): gse28422"

"Declarations Ethics approval and consent to participateAll participants provided written informed consent. The study was approved by the Norwegian Regional Ethical Committee (REK no: 2010/2539) and was conducted according to the Declaration of Helsinki. Consent for publicationNot applicable. Competing interestsThe authors declare that they have no competing interests. Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests."

"Funding This work was supported by the South East Norway Health Authority and Oslo University Hospital, Ullevaal under grant number 52009/8029 to KMG; the 6th EU Framework Program under grant number LSHM-CT-2003–502941 to KMG and SR; Legat til Forskning, Lovisenberg Diaconal Hospital to KMG and SR. ST and UR received support from National Institutes of Health grants (AG15833, AG00831, and AG18409) and Eli Lilly and Company. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript."