Effects of Renal Ischemic Postconditioning on Myocardial Ultrastructural Organization and Myocardial Expression of Bcl-2/Bax in Rabbits

Figure 2

Comparison of cardiac ultrastructural changes and apoptosis between experimental groups. The IR group underwent 60 min of left anterior descending coronary artery occlusion (LADO) and 6 h of reperfusion only. The RI-PostC group underwent 3 cycles of left renal artery occlusion for 30 seconds and release for 30 seconds before reperfusion. The RI-PostC + GF109203X group received 0.05 mg/kg GF109203X (protein kinase C inhibitor) intravenously for 10 min followed by RI-PostC. There were 12 rabbits in each group. (a) Electron microscopy observations. IR group: many mitochondria had extruded from the cells (arrows). RI-PostC group: the mitochondria were slightly swollen, and there was vacuolar degeneration (arrow) with partial disappearance of the ridges. RI-PostC + GF109203X group: extensive ultrastructural abnormalities were present, including 2 apoptotic bodies (arrows). (b) TUNEL assay for myocardial cell apoptosis (arrows point to TUNEL positive cells). (c) Comparison of AI between groups, calculated from experiments such as those shown in (b) ( per group). compared with the IR group; compared with the RI-PostC + GF109203X group.

(a)

(b)

(c)