ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Ischemic post-conditioning (PostC) has been demonstrated as a novel strategy to harness nature's protection against myocardial ischemia-reperfusion (I/R). Hypercholesterolemia (HC) has been reported to block the effect of PostC on the heart. Angiotensin II type-1 (AT1) modulators have shown benefits in myocardial ischemia. The present study investigates the effect of a novel inhibitor of AT1, azilsartan in PostC of the heart of normocholesterolemic (NC) and HC rats. MATERIALS AND METHODS: HC was induced by the administration of high-fat diet to the animals for eight weeks. Isolated Langendorff's perfused NC and HC rat hearts were exposed to global ischemia for 30 min and reperfusion for 120 min. I/R-injury had been assessed by cardiac hemodynamic parameters, myocardial infarct size, release of tumor necrosis factor-alpha troponin I, lactate dehydrogenase, creatine kinase, nitrite in coronary effluent, thiobarbituric acid reactive species, a reduced form of glutathione, superoxide anion, and left ventricle collagen content in normal and HC rat hearts. RESULTS: Azilsartan post-treatment and six episodes of PostC (10 sec each) afforded cardioprotection against I/R-injury in normal rat hearts. PostC protection against I/R-injury was abolished in HC rat hearts. Azilsartan prevented the HC-mediated impairment of the beneficial effects of PostC in I/R-induced myocardial injury, which was inhibited by L-N5-(1-Iminoethyl)ornithinehydrochloride, a potent inhibitor of endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS). CONCLUSION: Azilsartan treatment has attenuated the HC-induced impairment of beneficial effects of PostC in I/R-injury of rat hearts, by specifically modulating eNOS. Azilsartan may be explored further in I/R-myocardial injury, both in NC and HC conditions, with or without PostC.
ABSTRACT
In this work, robust approach for a highly sensitive point-of-care virus detection was established based on immunomagnetic nanobeads and fluorescent quantum dots (QDs). Taking advantage of immunomagnetic nanobeads functionalized with the monoclonal antibody (mAb) to the surface protein hemagglutinin (HA) of avian influenza virus (AIV) H9N2 subtype, H9N2 viruses were efficiently captured through antibody affinity binding, without pretreatment of samples. The capture kinetics could be fitted well with a first-order bimolecular reaction with a high capturing rate constant k(f) of 4.25 × 10(9) (mol/L)(-1) s(-1), which suggested that the viruses could be quickly captured by the well-dispersed and comparable-size immunomagnetic nanobeads. In order to improve the sensitivity, high-luminance QDs conjugated with streptavidin (QDs-SA) were introduced to this assay through the high affinity biotin-streptavidin system by using the biotinylated mAb in an immuno sandwich mode. We ensured the selective binding of QDs-SA to the available biotin-sites on biotinylated mAb and optimized the conditions to reduce the nonspecific adsorption of QDs-SA to get a limit of detection low up to 60 copies of viruses in 200 µL. This approach is robust for application at the point-of-care due to its very good specificity, precision, and reproducibility with an intra-assay variability of 1.35% and an interassay variability of 3.0%, as well as its high selectivity also demonstrated by analysis of synthetic biological samples with mashed tissues and feces. Moreover, this method has been validated through a double-blind trial with 30 throat swab samples with a coincidence of 96.7% with the expected results.
