Abstract

We sought to determine that whether acute and delayed cardioprotection offered by remote aortic preconditioning involves gadolinium sensitive-stretch activated channels. Hearts of sham operated rats, isolated 40 min and 24h after the isolation of abdominal aorta, were subjected to global ischaemia for 30 min followed by reperfusion for 120 min. Coronary effluent was analyzed for lactate dehydrogenase and creatine kinase release to assess the degree of cardiac injury. Myocardial infarct size was estimated macroscopically by using triphenyl tetrazolium chloride staining. Remote aortic preconditioning, immediately and 24 h before, subjecting the isolated heart to 30 min ischaemia and 120 min reperfusion markedly reduced lactate dehydrogenase and creatine kinase release in coronary effluent and myocardial infarct size. lntraperitoneal administration of gadolinium chloride (30 mg/kg) showed protection against sustained ischaemia and reperfusion whereas it did not seems to modulate the cardioprotective effect of remote aortic preconditioning. On this basis we concluded that the cardioprotective effect of remote aortic preconditioning did not involves stretch-activated channels.