The author reviews the protective effects of ischemic postconditioning, a recently emerging strategy with broad implications in the search for new treatments in stroke and myocardial ischemic injury. Ischemic postconditioning, which refers to a series of brief ischemia and reperfusion cycles applied immediately at the site of the ischemic organ after reperfusion, results in reduced infarction i...

Background & Aims: Ischemic postconditioning, conducted by a series of brief occlusion and release of the bilateral common carotid arteries, has neuroprotective properties in permanent or transient models of middle cerebral artery (MCA) occlusion but its delayed neuroprotective effects in the embolic model of stroke, especially in female rat, have not yet been reported and were investigated ...

postconditioning is a simple and safe strategy for cardioprotection and infarct size limitation. our previous study showed that oxytocin (ot) exerts postconditioning effect on ischemic/reperfused isolated rat heart. the aim of this study was to investigate the involvement of ot receptor, mitochondrial atp-sensitive potassium channel (mkatp), nitric oxide (no) and cyclooxygenase (cox) pathways i...

Postconditioning, i.e., brief intermittent episodes of myocardial ischemia-reperfusion performed at the onset of reperfusion, reduces infarct size after prolonged ischemia. Our goal was to determine whether postconditioning is protective against myocardial stunning. Accordingly, conscious chronically instrumented dogs (sonomicrometry, coronary balloon occluder) were subjected to a control seque...

Edaravone, an effective free radical scavenger, can alleviate myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI) by decreasing reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulation. The speckle tracking imaging (STI) could precisely and objectively evaluate the global and regional myocardial deformation. The aim of our study was to assess the protective effect of edaravone postconditioning on IRI in rabbits by ...

Postconditioning has been shown to protect the mouse brain from ischemic injury. However, the neuroprotective mechanisms of postconditioning remain elusive. We have found that toll-like receptor 5 (TLR5) plays an integral role in postconditioning-induced neuroprotection through Akt/nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) activation in cerebral ischemia. Compared to animals that received 30 min of transi...

Mitochondria play a pivotal role in cardioprotection. Here we report some fundamental studies which considered the role of mitochondrial components (connexin 43, mitochondrial KATP channels and mitochondrial permeability transition pore) in postconditioning cardioprotection. We briefly discuss the role of mitochondria, reactive oxygen species and gaseous molecules in postconditioning. Also the ...

The present study sought to determine whether the combination of late preconditioning (PC) with postconditioning enhances the reduction in infarct size. Chronically instrumented rats were assigned to a 45-min (subset 1) or 60-min (subset 2) coronary occlusion followed by 24 h of reperfusion. In each subset, rats received no further intervention (control) or were preconditioned 24 h before occlu...

As clinical trials of pharmacological neuroprotective strategies in stroke have been disappointing, attention has turned to the brain's own endogenous strategies for neuroprotection. Recently, a hypothesis has been offered that modified reperfusion subsequent to a prolonged ischemic episode may also confer ischemic neuroprotection, a phenomenon termed 'postconditioning'. Here we characterize bo...

BACKGROUND Postconditioning has been suggested to reduce myocardial damage during primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI) in patients with ST-segment-elevation myocardial infarction. However, because clinical experience is limited, we examined the cardioprotective effects of postconditioning, using cardiac MRI in patients treated with PPCI. METHODS AND RESULTS One hundred eighteen p...