High-cholesterol diet effects on ischemia/reperfusion injury of the heart

D'ANNUNZIO V; DONATO M; BUCHHOLZ B; PEREZ V; BERG G; MIKSZTOWICZ V; GELPI RJ

CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHYSIOLOGY AND PHARMACOLOGY

NATL RESEARCH COUNCIL CANADA-N R C RESEARCH PRESS

Lugar: Otawa; Año: 2012 vol. 90 p. 1185 - 1196

0008-4212

Abstract Ischemic heart disease is the leading cause of morbi-mortality in developed countries. Both ischemia/reperfusion injury and mechanisms of cardioprotection have been studied for more than 50 years. It is known that the physiopathological mechanism of myocardial ischemia involves several factors that are closely related to its development, hypercholesterolemia which is one of the main ones. Therefore, the objective of this revision was to elucidate the effects of a high-cholesterol diet on normal ventricular function and ischemia/reperfusion injury-associated phenomenon such as post-ischemic ventricular dysfunction (stunned myocardium). Although there exist many studies considering several aspects of this physiopathological entity, the majority was carried out on normal animals. Thus, experiments carried out on hypercholesterolemic models are controversial, in particular those evaluating different mechanisms of cardioprotection such as ischemic preconditioning and postconditioning, and cardioprotection granted by drugs such as statins which apart from exerting a lipid-lowering effect, they exert pleiotropic effects providing cardioprotection against ischemia/reperfusion injury. These controversial results regarding mechanisms of cardioprotection, vary according to: quality, composition andhigh-cholesterol diet time of administration as well as the different species used in each experiment. Thus, in order to compare the results, it is necessary to take all these variables into account since they can change the obtained results.