Immune, Inflammatory, and Oxidative Responses in Cardiovascular Complications

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Although treatment for risk factors for CVD such as hypertension, hyperlipidaemia, obesity, and diabetes has steadily decreased mortality due to cardiovascular events in the last three decades, the underling mechanisms for several CVD remain elusive. It is well known that oxidative stress and inflammation have been implicated in the etiology of several CVD. Further, oxidative stress and inflammation triggered signals can either directly cause injury to the cardiac tissues or increase the atherosclerotic process. However, most of the data for these studies are derived from experimental animals. Long term prospective clinical trials are required to validate the contribution of oxidative stress and inflammation in CVD. Moreover, better understanding of the signaling mechanisms that interplay between oxidative stress and inflammatory signaling would be beneficial in designing more selective and targeted therapy to combat these deleterious mediators of CVD. The purpose of this special issue is to assemble information from preclini-cal as well as clinical studies in order to provide an additional opportunity to identify the potential molecules/mechanisms that disrupt equilibrium between immune, inflammatory, and oxidative responses involved in the pathogenesis of CVD. To better understand the pathogenesis of CVD in chronic kidney disease (CKD) P. Bartnicki et al. investigated the role of continuous erythropoietin receptor activator (CERA) on selective biomarkers of CVD. In this study, blood samples from 25 CKD patients with CERA treatment and 20 healthy subjects were evaluated for various inflammatory markers , biochemical parameters, and other endothelial specific biomarkers. Their results indicate that biomarkers of inflammation as well as endothelial dysfunction are significantly elevated in the nondialyzed CKD patients. Specifically, they found that biomarkers such as TNFr1, sICAM-1, and MMP9 could be the risk factors of CVD in CKD patients. Further, this study indicates that CERA treatment by using MPG-EPO diminished endothelial dysfunction and improves left ventricular function in CKD patients. Another research article by B. Al-Shammari et al. investigated the pulmonary toxicity associated with the amiodarone, a drug used for treating ventricular and supraventricular dysrhythmia. In this study, treatment of rats with amiodarone leads to a time-dependent toxicity in the lungs. Specifically, amiodarone decreased antioxidant enzymes such as catalase, SOD, GPx, and GR and increased oxidative stress. Further, long term treatment of amiodarone for 3 to 4 weeks leads to significant toxicity as determined by granulomatous inflammation and interstitial pneumonitis. These studies indicate that imbalance …