Late ischemic preconditioning of the myocardium alters the expression of genes involved in inflammatory response.

Myocardial ischemic preconditioning (IPC) is a potent endogenous mechanism of cardioprotection against ischemia-reperfusion injury. In this study we focused on the second phase of IPC as the most interesting in terms of therapeutic implementations. We aimed at the detection of genes, which are differentially expressed at 16 h after reperfusion.

Cardiac ankyrin repeat protein, a negative regulator of cardiac gene expression, is augmented in human heart failure.

The technique of representational difference analysis of cDNA has been applied to screen for differentially expressed genes in a canine model of pacing-induced heart failure. We identified the canine homolog of the cardiac ankyrin repeat protein (CARP) which has been shown to be involved in the regulation of the transcription of cardiac genes. To confirm the significance for human heart failure, cardiac tissue specimens obtained from non-failing donor hearts and from explanted hearts from patients with end-stage heart failure were investigated.