Tongguan Capsule Protects against Myocardial Ischemia and Reperfusion Injury in Mice

Jianyong Qi,Lei Wang,Shiyu Ma,Miao Zhou,Liheng Guo,Donghui Huang,Jiashin Wu,Juan Yu,Minzhou Zhang

doi:10.1155/2013/159237

Abstract

Myocardial ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) can induce lethal ventricular arrhythmia and myocardial infarction. One of the clinical strategies for managing patients with high risk of myocardial I/R is to prevent the occurrence of arrhythmias and limit the size of infarction following a coronary episode. Tongguan Capsule (TGC) is one of the popular herbal remedies in treating coronary artery disease in the clinics of Chinese medicine. However, the potential roles and mechanisms of TGC in reducing I/R injury are still unclear. The present study statistically assessed the effectiveness of TGC in reducing I/R injury by comparing the infarct size (IS), risk region (RR), and arrhythmia (in electrocardiogram) among four groups of surgically created mice models of myocardial I/R: SHAM, I/R, VER (I/R with verapamil 20 mg/kg pretreatment), and TGC (I/R with TGC 5 g/kg/d pretreatment). We found that IS was significantly smaller in the TGC and VER groups than I/R group, and the incidence of arrhythmias was reduced in the TGC group compared with I/R group, although there were no differences in RR among the four groups. We conclude that TGC is effective in reducing I/R injury in mice. These results provided an experimental basis for clinical application of TGC in reducing I/R injury.

Highlights

Acute myocardial infarction is the most common cause of cardiac death
We observed that Tongguan Capsule (TGC) could significantly reduce the infarct size (IS) of ischemia reperfusion (I/R)
Triphenyltetrazolium chloride (TTC) and Evans blue were purchased from DingGuo Biotechnology Corp (Beijing, China); 10% Neutral Buffered Formalin were purchased from WEX Corp (Guangzhou, China); Pentobarbital sodium were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich Corp. (Guangzhou, China); TGC was produced by Guangdong Province Hospital of Chinese Medicine (Guangzhou, China), batch number 100519

Summary

Introduction

Acute myocardial infarction is the most common cause of cardiac death. 700 patients undergo cardioplegic arrest for various cardiac surgeries [5]. Despite the different etiologies that lead to partial or complete arrest of cardiac circulation, both patient groups share myocardial ischemia and reperfusion injury as a common pathophysiological feature [6]. Myocardial ischemia and reperfusion injury was first described by Jennings et al in 1960 [7]. They observed that reperfusion accelerated the development of necrosis in a canine coronary ligation model with histological changes after 30 to 60 minutes of I/R comparable to the degree of necrosis normally seen after 24 hours of permanent coronary occlusion

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion