Heat shock proteins in myocardial stress.

In this overview four questions were discussed related to heat shock proteins and myocardial ischemia. Heat shock proteins are chaperones which associate with malfolded proteins and prevent their aggregation into large damaging complexes. In myocardial ischemia, the inducible heat shock protein 70 (hsp70), the mitochondrial heat shock protein 60 and the small 27 heat shock protein increases after 30 minutes of ischemia of the rat heart and subsequent reperfusion.