OBJECTIVES Brief episodes of ischemia and reperfusion after a lethal ischemic insult confer cardioprotection, a phenomenon termed "ischemic postconditioning." However, all studies reported to date have been conducted in open-chest animal models. We sought to determine whether postconditioning occurs in conscious animals and whether it protects against severe myocardial injury. METHODS Chronic...

BACKGROUND Ischemic pre- and postconditioning protects the liver against ischemia/reperfusion injuries. The aim of the present study was to examine how ischemic pre- and postconditioning affects gene expression of hypoxia inducible factor 1α (HIF-1α), vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGF-A) and transforming growth factor β (TGF-β) in liver tissue. METHODS 28 rats were randomized into fi...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Ischemic postconditioning has been found to decrease brain infarct area and spinal cord ischemic injury. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that ischemic postconditioning reduces global cerebral ischemia/reperfusion-induced structural and functional injury in rats. METHODS Ten-minute global ischemia was induced by 4-vessel occlusion in male Sprague-Dawley rats. The...

Acute myocardial infarction is a frequent and disabling disease. Ischemic postconditioning, consisting of repeated brief cycles of ischemia-reperfusion performed immediately after reperfusion following a prolonged ischemic insult, dramatically reduces infarct size in experimental models. A recent clinical study demonstrated that repeated brief episodes of inflation-deflation of the angioplasty ...

Despite nearly twenty years of research into the field of ischemic preconditioning, the actual mechanism of protection remains unclear. However, much progress has been made in elucidating the signal transduction pathways that convey the extracellular signal initiated by the preconditioning stimulus to the intracellular targets of cardioprotection, with many of these pathways involving the activ...

Statins have been shown to be cardioprotective; however, their interaction with endogenous cardioprotection by ischemic preconditioning and postconditioning is not known. In the present study, we examined if acute and chronic administration of the 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl CoA reductase inhibitor lovastatin affected the infarct size-limiting effect of ischemic preconditioning and postcondition...

INTRODUCTION Ischemic postconditioning has been recognized as effective in the prevention of reperfusion injury in situations of ischemia and reperfusion in various organs and tissues. However, it remains unclear what would be the best way to accomplish it, since studies show great variation in the method of their application. OBJECTIVE To assess the protective effect of ischemic postconditio...

We have previously reported that the prolonged transient acidosis during early reperfusion mediates the cardioprotective effects in canine hearts. Recently, postconditioning has been shown to be one of the novel strategies to mediate cardioprotection. We tested the contribution of the prolonged transient acidosis to the cardioprotection of postconditioning. Open-chest anesthetized dogs subjecte...

Postconditioning has been shown to protect the mouse brain from ischemic injury. However, the neuroprotective mechanisms of postconditioning remain elusive. We have found that toll-like receptor 5 (TLR5) plays an integral role in postconditioning-induced neuroprotection through Akt/nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) activation in cerebral ischemia. Compared to animals that received 30 min of transi...

BACKGROUND Ischemic postconditioning has been reported to reduce infarct size in patients with ST-segment-elevation myocardial infarction. However, cardioprotective effects of postconditioning have not been demonstrated in a large-scale trial. METHODS AND RESULTS We performed a multicenter, prospective, randomized, open-label, blinded end-point trial. A total of 700 patients undergoing primar...