Nitroglycerine and sodium trioxodinitrate: from the discovery to the preconditioning effect.

The history began in the 19th century with Ascanio Sobrero (1812-1888), the discoverer of glycerol trinitrate (nitroglycerine, NTG), and with Angelo Angeli (1864-1931), the discoverer of sodium trioxodinitrate (Angeli's salt). It is likely that Angeli and Sobrero never met, but their two histories will join each other more than a century later. In fact, it has been discovered that both NTG and Angeli's salt are able to induce a preconditioning effect.

Post-ischaemic activation of kinases in the pre-conditioning-like cardioprotective effect of the platelet-activating factor.

Aim: Platelet-activating factor (PAF) triggers cardiac pre-conditioning against ischemia/reperfusion injury. The actual protection of ischaemic pre-conditioning occurs in the reperfusion phase. Therefore, we studied in this phase the kinases involved in PAF-induced pre-conditioning.

The platelet activating factor triggers preconditioning-like cardioprotective effect via mitochondrial K-ATP channels and redox-sensible signaling.

Endogenous platelet activating factor (PAF) is involved in heart ischemic preconditioning. PAF can also afford pharmacological preconditioning. We studied whether mitochondrial-ATP-sensitive K(+) (mK(ATP)) channels and reactive oxygen species (ROS) are involved in PAF-induced cardioprotection.

Post-conditioning induced cardioprotection requires signaling through a redox-sensitive mechanism, mitochondrial ATP-sensitive K+ channel and protein kinase C activation.

Post-conditioning (Post-C) induced cardioprotection involves activation of guanylyl-cyclase. In the ischemic preconditioning scenario, the downstream targets of cGMP include mitochondrial ATP-sensitive K(+) (mK(ATP)) channels and protein kinase C (PKC), which involve reactive oxygen species (ROS) production. This study tests the hypothesis that mK(ATP), PKC and ROS are also involved in the Post-C protection.

Post-conditioning reduces infarct size in the isolated rat heart: role of coronary flow and pressure and the nitric oxide/cGMP pathway.

We aimed to assess the role of the nitric oxide (NO)-cGMP pathway in cardioprotection by brief intermittent ischemias at the onset of reperfusion (i.e., post-conditioning (Post-con)).