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Ischemic Preconditioning Efficacy Following Anabolic Steroid Usage: A Clear Difference Between Sedentary and Exercise-Trained Rat Hearts

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Abstract

Previous studies show that anabolic steroids impair innate cardioprotective mechanisms. Here, we investigated the effect of supraphysiological doses of nandrolone on ischemic preconditioning (IPC) as a potent cardioprotective tool against ischemia reperfusion (IR) injury in rat hearts. Male Wistar rats in two experimental settings of sedentary and exercise-trained (60 min/day swimming, 5 days/week, for 8 weeks) were either pretreated with intramuscular injections of arachis oil (Arach, n = 16) as vehicle or nandrolone decanoate (ND, n = 8), 10 mg/kg/week, for 8 weeks. At the end, the hearts were excised and perfused in a Langendorff system. Then, the vehicle-treated hearts subdivided into the IR (30 min of LAD coronary artery occlusion and 120 min reperfusion, n = 8) and IPC (three cycles of 3-min ischemia and 3-min reperfusion before test ischemia, n = 8) groups and nandrolone-treated hearts served as ND + IPC (nandrolone pretreatment before IR and IPC protocols, n = 8) group. Post-ischemic cardiac function and infarct size were assessed. Reperfusion arrhythmias were analyzed using a standard scoring system. In sedentary hearts, ND slightly increased heart-to-body weight ratio and increased baseline cardiac contractile function. In trained hearts, ND markedly increased heart-to-body weight ratio which was also associated with enhanced baseline cardiac function. ND pretreatment enhanced protective effects of IPC in sedentary group; however, abolished these effects in exercise-trained group. The arrhythmia score was not significantly different between nandrolone-treated groups vs. respective preconditioned groups. Our findings show that ND impairs IPC-induced cardioprotection in exercise-trained rat hearts. Cardiac hypertrophy seems to play a crucial role in this response.

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Acknowledgements

The authors appreciate the Vice Chancellor for Research and Technology, Bushehr University of Medical Sciences for financial support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, Bushehr University of Medical Sciences, Bushehr, Iran

    Zahra Akbari & Khalil Pourkhalili

  2. Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences, Yazd, Iran

    Mansour Esmailidehaj

  3. Department of Biology, Islamic Azad University, Kazerun, Iran

    Ebrahim Avarand & Mehrdad Shariati

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  1. Zahra Akbari
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Akbari, Z., Esmailidehaj, M., Avarand, E. et al. Ischemic Preconditioning Efficacy Following Anabolic Steroid Usage: A Clear Difference Between Sedentary and Exercise-Trained Rat Hearts. Cardiovasc Toxicol 19, 287–296 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12012-018-9497-4

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