Shen-Fu Injection Preconditioning Inhibits Myocardial Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury in Diabetic Rats: Activation of eNOS via the PI3K/Akt Pathway

The aim of this paper is to investigate whether Shen-fu injection (SFI), a traditional Chinese medicine, could attenuate myocardial ischemia-reperfusion (MI/R) injury in diabetes. Streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats were randomly assigned to the Sham, I/R, SFI preconditioning, and SFI plus wortmannin (a phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase inhibitor) groups. After the treatment, hearts were subjected to 30 min of coronary artery occlusion and 2 h reperfusion except the Sham group. Myocardial infarct size and cardiomyocytes apoptosis were increased significantly in MI/R group as compared with the Sham group. SFI preconditioning significantly decreased infarct size, apoptosis, caspase-3 protein expression, MDA level in myocardial tissues, and plasma level of CK and LDH but increased p-Akt, p-eNOS, bcl-2 protein expression, and SOD activity compared to I/R group. Moreover, SFI-induced cardioprotection was abolished by wortmannin. We conclude that SFI preconditioning protects diabetic hearts from I/R injury via PI3K/Akt-dependent pathway.