Relationship between calcium overload and myocardial ischemia reperfusion injury and intervention strategy of Chinese herbal medicine / 中国中药杂志

ABSTRACT

The recent report from National Cardiovascular Center shows that cardiovascular diseases account for more than 40% of disease deaths among residents, so it has become the first cause of death among the residents in our country, and the mortality of coronary heart disease is increasing year by year. Revascularization can quickly open the clogged blood vessels and restore coronary blood supply, so it is an important approach for the treatment of coronary heart disease. However, the revascularization can not terminate the pathological development of coronary heart disease because it is just a local treatment method. In addition, a series of reperfusion injuries after revascularization would seriously restrict its treatment effect for coronary heart disease. Myocardial ischemia reperfusion injury is a complex pathological process, which is closely related to oxygen free radicals, calcium overload and energy metabolism disorder. The calcium overload can be seen during reperfusion in the myocardial cells, and it can cause further damages to the myocardial cells through various mechanisms. Calcium overload is a common pathway of myocardial necrosis and apoptosis, so prevention and treatment of calcium overload is an important method to prevent ischemia reperfusion. The commonly used calcium channel blockers for preventing calcium overload has made great progress, all of which can act on L-type calcium channel of vascular smooth muscle to inhibit calcium overload. However, their clinical application was restrained to a certain extent due to the single target and great side effects. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is a great treasure, and many drugs in TCM have similar effects with calcium antagonists, so the development and application of such drugs would be an important task for contemporary TCM doctors to make up for the deficiency of Western medicine.