Abstract:

Objective: Ischaemia-reperfusion (IR) injury is a chain of events put in place by tissue ischaemia. Reperfusion following the cellular damage causes an active inflammatory response. Erythrocyte deformability and plasma viscosity play a critical role in tissue and organ perfusion. In this study we aimed to evaluate the effect of levosimendan and nigella sativa on erythrocyte deformability during myocardial IR injury in rats. Methods: Twenty-four Wistar albino rats were included in the study. The animals were randomly divided into four experimental groups. The coronary arteries of rats in Group C (control group) were not occluded or reperfused. Myocardial IR was performed by ligating the left anterior descending coronary artery for 30 min, followed by 2 h of reperfusion in the IR (IR), IR-levosimendan (24µg/kg) (IRL) group and IR-nigella sativa (0.2 mL/kg) (IRNS) group. Erythrocyte suspensions formed with a PBS buffer solution containing 5% htc were used to measure the deformability. Results: As a result compared to control group, IR increased the relative resistance, a marker of erythrocyte deformability, significantly (p<0.05). There were significant differences between the groups according to the comparisons with ANOVA test (p<0.0001). The results obtained after corrections with Bonferroni test were as follows: Comparisons of the IRL and IRNS groups revealed similar results (p=0.764). The values of the IR group were significantly higher than those of the control, IRNS and IRL groups (p<0.0001, p=0.001, p=0.003, respectively). Conclusion: Rats with IR injury had decreased erythrocyte deformability. This injury might cause more problems in microcirculation. Levosimendan and nigella sativa may be useful in reducing the adverse effects of this type of injury.

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