Urocortin protects cardiac myocytes from ischemia/reperfusion injury by attenuating calcium-insensitive phospholipase A2 gene expression

Lawrence, K.M., Scarabelli, T.M., Turtle, L., Chanalaris, A., Townsend, P.A., Carroll, C.J., Hubank, M., Stephanou, A., Knight, R.A. and Latchman, D.S. (2003) Urocortin protects cardiac myocytes from ischemia/reperfusion injury by attenuating calcium-insensitive phospholipase A2 gene expression. FASEB Journal, 17 (15), 2313-2315. (doi:10.1096/fj.02-0832fje).

Abstract

We have used Affymetrix gene chip technology to look for changes in gene expression caused by a 24 h exposure of rat primary neonatal cardiac myocytes to the cardioprotective agent urocortin. We observed a 2.5-fold down-regulation at both the mRNA and protein levels of a specific calcium-insensitive phospholipase A2 enzyme. Levels of lysophosphatidylcholine, a toxic metabolite of phospholipase A2, were lowered by 30% in myocytes treated with urocortin for 24 h and by 50% with the irreversible iPLA2 inhibitor bromoenol lactone compared with controls. Both 4 h ischemia and ischemia followed by 24 h reperfusion caused a significant increase in lysophosphatidylcholine concentration compared with controls. When these myocytes were pretreated with urocortin, the ischemia-induced increase in lysophosphatidylcholine concentration was significantly lowered. Moreover, co-incubation of cardiac myocytes with urocortin, or the specific phospholipase A2 inhibitor bromoenol lactone, reduces the cytotoxicity produced by lysophosphatidylcholine or ischemia/reperfusion. Similarly, in the intact heart ex vivo we found that cardiac damage measured by infarct size was significantly increased when lysophoshatidylcholine was applied during ischemia, compared with ischemia alone, and that pre-treatment with both urocortin and bromoenol lactone reversed the increase in infarct size. This, to our knowledge, is the first study linking the cardioprotective effect of urocortin to a decrease in a specific enzyme protein and a subsequent decrease in the concentration of its cardiotoxic metabolite.

This record has no associated files available for download.

Contributors

Download statistics