Antioxidants and Myocardial Ischemia Reperfusion Injuries.docVIP

Review Article 369 Antioxidants and Myocardial Ischemia: Reperfusion Injuries Jan-Kan Chen, PhD; Shu-Er Chow1, PhD Animal studies have demonstrated that restoration of blood flow to severely ischemic myocardium is a prerequisite for myocardial salvage. However, it has been shown that the restoration of blood flow to ischemic myocardium may be associated with deleterious changes of the myocardium, includ- ing arrhythmias, enzyme release, and contractile dysfunction. These changes were considered to be additional injuries to the myocardium manifested at the time of reperfusion. The reper- fusion was accompanied by a burst of oxygen free radical gen- eration and their role as main mediators of the reperfusion injury have been well accepted. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) and cellular redox status regulate many important cellu- lar activities. The role of antioxidant as a therapy for reperfu- sion injury has thus been tried with mixed and mostly negative results. Further studies are needed if the antioxidant therapies for ischemia reperfusion injury were to be effective. (Chang Gung Med J 2005;28:369-77) Prof. Jan-Kan Chen Key words: polyphenolics, ROS, infarction. I t is well known that there is a positive correlation between the levels of dietary saturated fat and the (1) mortality from coronary heart disease (CHD). An interesting statistics however, showed that compared to other developed countries such as the USA, France has a much lower incidence of CHD despite the fact that they consume comparable amounts of dietary fat. This phenomenon, termed the French The natural phenolic compounds include two major classes, the flavonoids and non-flavonoids. The non-flavonoid compounds in wine include stil- bene, hydroxyl cinnamates and hydroxybenzoates. The compound that is responsible for possible car- diovascular benefits is the stilbene re