Cardiac preconditioning represents the most potent and consistently reproducible method of rescuing heart tissue from undergoing irreversible ischemic damage. One of the major goals of the current cardiovascular research is to identify a reliable cardioprotective intervention that can salvage ischemic myocardium. The aim of the present study is to evaluate the oxytocin (OT)-induced cardioprotec...

The cardiac “warm up” phenomenon, described more than 50 years ago in patients with coronary artery disease, refers to improvement in cardiac symptoms and physical performance following exposure to short periods of ischemia.1 Several mechanisms, such as adaptive reduction in oxygen consumption by the ischemic myocardial region, improved oxygen supply via collateral recruitment or dilation of th...

Cardiac hypertrophy, especially left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH), is a major compensatory mechanism in response to pressure overload derived from hypertension. Also, tissue remodelling through LVH is known to lead to heart failure if the increased workload is sustained over a long period of time. In a nutshell, hypertension can result in hypertrophy which, if sustained, leads to heart failure...

Hassouna, Ashraf, Bashir M. Matata, and Manuel Galiñanes. PKCis upstream and PKCis downstream of mitoKATP channels in the signal transduction pathway of ischemic preconditioning of human myocardium. Am J Physiol Cell Physiol 287: C1418–C1425, 2004. First published August 4, 2004; doi:10.1152/ajpcell.00144. 2004.—Protein kinase C (PKC) is involved in the process of ischemic preconditioning (IPC)...

Methods. Adult Wistar male rats were subjected to focal cerebral ischaemia for 1 h followed by 24 h or 7 days of reperfusion. Preconditioning consisted of 15 min exposure to sevoflurane at 1 minimum alveolar concentration (2.6%) 72 h before ischaemia. Post-conditioning was performed by exposure to sevoflurane immediately at the onset of reperfusion or by a delayed exposure 5 min after the onset...

Da-Bu-Yin-Wan (DBYW) and Qian-Zheng-San (QZS), two classic traditional Chinese medicinal formulas, were clinically employed to treat Parkinson's disease (PD). Our previous studies demonstrated neuroprotective effects of them on mitochondrial function in PD mice induced by 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP). The purpose of this research was to investigate their possible mechanis...

The relative roles of free-radical production, mitochondrial ATP-sensitive K+ (mitoKATP) channels and possible receptor cross-talk in both opioid and adenosine A1 receptor (A1AR) mediated protection were assessed in a rat model of myocardial infarction. Sprague-Dawley rats were subjected to 30 min of occlusion and 90 min of reperfusion. The untreated rats exhibited an infarct of 58.8 +/- 2.9% [...

Ischemic preconditioning, or the protective effect of short ischemic episodes on a longer, potentially injurious, ischemic period, is prevented by antagonists of mitochondrial ATP-sensitive K+ channels (mitoKATP) and involves changes in mitochondrial energy metabolism and reactive oxygen release after ischemia. However, the effects of ischemic preconditioning itself on mitochondria are still po...

Rationale: Cardioprotective pathways may involve a mitochondrial ATP-sensitive potassium (mitoKATP) channel but its composition is not fully understood. Objective: We hypothesized that the mitoKATP channel contains a sulfonylurea receptor (SUR)2 regulatory subunit and aimed to identify the molecular structure. Methods and Results: Western blot analysis in cardiac mitochondria detected a 55-kDa ...