Cardioprotective Effect of Sasanquasaponin Preconditioning via Bradykinin-NO Pathway in Isolated Rat Heart

Sasanquasaponin (SQS) is an effective component of Camellia oleifera Abel This study was designed to investigate the cardioprotective effect of SQS against ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury and the possible mechanism in isolated rat hearts. These hearts were pretreated by SQS only or SQS and HOE140 in different groups, and then subjected to I/R injury. Hemodynamic parameters, oxidative injury, and NO level were measured. The results showed that SQS preconditioning could decrease the incidences of arrhythmias and improve the heart functions. In addition, SQS preconditioning could protect isolated I/R injured heart against lipid peroxidation, as evidenced by increases in SOD and GSH-Px activity, and by decreases in contents of MDA, ROS generation. However, HOE140 treatment reversed all these indexes. NO production was significantly decreased after a treatment with HOE140. So we can propose that SQS preconditioning could induce the cardioprotective effects and the possible mechanism was that the activation of bradykinin-NO system by SQS preconditioning had an inhibition effect on ROS generation in isolated heart. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.