Rationale: Reflex-mediated sympathoexcitation is central to the pathogenesis of arrhythmias and heart disease; neuraxial modulation can favorably attenuate these cardiac reflexes leading to cardioprotection. Objective: The purpose of this study was to define the mechanism by which cardiac neural decentralization and spinal cord stimulation (SCS) reduces ischemia-induced ventricular fibrillation (VF) and sudden cardiac death (SCD) by utilizing direct neurotransmitter measurements in the heart. Methods and Results: Direct measurement of norepinephrine (NE) levels in the left ventricular (LV) interstitial fluid (ISF) by microdialysis in response to transient left anterior descending coronary artery occlusion (CAO: 15 min) in anesthetized canines. Responses were studied with: (i) intact neuraxis and were compared to those in which the (ii) intrathoracic component of the cardiac neuraxis (stellate ganglia),(iii) the intrinsic cardiac neuronal (ICN) system were surgically delinked from the central nervous system versus (iv) subjects with intact neuraxis subjected to pre-emptive SCS (T1-T3 spinal level). With an intact neuraxis, animals with exaggerated NE-ISF levels in response to CAO were at increased risk for VF and SCD. During CAO there was a 152% increase in NE level when the entire neuraxis was intact compared to 114% following intrathoracic neuraxial decentralization (removal of the stellates) and 16% increase following ICN decentralization, when the entire heart and ICN was delinked from the other levels of the neuraxis. During SCS, CAO increased NE levels by 59%. Risk for CAO-induced VF was 38% in controls, 8% following total decentralization and 11% following SCS. Conclusions: These data indicate that ischemia related afferent neuronal transmission engages central and intrathoracic sympathetic reflexes which amplifies sympathoexcitation and results in an increase in regional ventricular NE release that causes VF and SCD. Surgical decentralization or SCS prevents this amplification of sympathoexcitation, attenuating the resultant NE release, and reduces VF and SCD.
Jeffrey L. Ardell, Robert D. Foreman, J. Andrew Armour, Kalyanam Shivkumar
Cardiomyopathies are complex heart muscle diseases that can be inherited or acquired. Dilated cardiomyopathy can result from mutations in LMNA, encoding the nuclear intermediate filament proteins lamin A/C. Some LMNA mutations lead to accumulation of the lamin A precursor, prelamin A, which is disease causing in a number of tissues yet its impact upon the heart is unknown. Here we discovered myocardial prelamin A accumulation occurred in a case of dilated cardiomyopathy and show that a novel mouse model of cardiac specific prelamin A accumulation exhibited a phenotype consistent with ‘inflammatory cardiomyopathy’ which we observed to be similar to HIV associated cardiomyopathy, an acquired disease state. Numerous HIV protease therapies are known to inhibit ZMPSTE24, the enzyme responsible for prelamin A processing, and we confirmed that accumulation of prelamin A occurred in HIV+ patient cardiac biopsies. These findings: (1) confirm a unifying pathological role for prelamin A common to genetic and acquired cardiomyopathies; (2) have implications for the management of HIV patients with cardiac disease suggesting protease inhibitors should be replaced with alternative therapies i.e. non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors; and (3) suggest that targeting inflammation may be a useful treatment strategy for certain forms of inherited cardiomyopathy.
Daniel Brayson, Andrea Frustaci, Romina Verardo, Cristina Chimenti, Matteo Antonio Russo, Robert Hayward, Sadia Munir Ahmad, Gema Vizcay-Barrena, Andrea Protti, Peter S. Zammit, Cristobal G. dos Remedios, Elisabeth Ehler, Ajay M. Shah, Catherine M. Shanahan
Deterioration or inborn malformations of the cardiac conduction system (CCS) interfere with proper impulse propagation in the heart and may lead to sudden cardiac death or heart failure. Patients afflicted with arrhythmia depend on antiarrhythmic medication or invasive therapy, such as pacemaker implantation. An ideal way to treat these patients would be CCS tissue restoration. This, however, requires precise knowledge regarding the molecular mechanisms underlying CCS development. Here, we aimed to identify regulators of CCS development. We performed a compound screen in zebrafish embryos and identified tolterodine, a muscarinic receptor antagonist, as a modifier of CCS development. Tolterodine provoked a lower heart rate, pericardiac edema, and arrhythmia. Blockade of muscarinic M3, but not M2, receptors induced transcriptional changes leading to amplification of sinoatrial cells and loss of atrioventricular identity. Transcriptome data from an engineered human heart muscle model provided additional evidence for the contribution of muscarinic M3 receptors during cardiac progenitor specification and differentiation. Taken together, we found that muscarinic M3 receptors control the CCS already before the heart becomes innervated. Our data indicate that muscarinic receptors maintain a delicate balance between the developing sinoatrial node and the atrioventricular canal, which is probably required to prevent the development of arrhythmia.
Martina S. Burczyk, Martin D. Burkhalter, Teresa Casar Tena, Laurel A. Grisanti, Michael Kauk, Sabrina Matysik, Cornelia Donow, Monika Kustermann, Melanie Rothe, Yinghong Cui, Farah Raad, Svenja Laue, Allessandra Moretti, Wolfram-H. Zimmermann, Jürgen Wess, Michael Kühl, Carsten Hoffmann, Douglas G. Tilley, Melanie Philipp
Background. The presence of an early repolarization pattern (ERP) on the surface electrocardiogram (ECG) is associated with risk of ventricular fibrillation and sudden cardiac death. Family studies have shown that ERP is a highly heritable trait but molecular genetic determinants are unknown. Methods. To identify genetic susceptibility loci for ERP, we performed a GWAS and meta-analysis in 2,181 cases and 23,641 controls of European ancestry. Results. We identified a genome-wide significant (p<5E-8) locus in the KCND3 (potassium voltage gated channel subfamily D member 3) gene that was successfully replicated in additional 1,124 cases and 12,510 controls. A subsequent joint meta-analysis of the discovery and replication cohorts identified rs1545300 as the lead SNP at the KCND3 locus (OR 0.82 per minor T allele, p=7.7E-12), but did not reveal additional loci. Co-localization analyses indicate causal effects of KCND3 gene expression levels on ERP in both cardiac left ventricle and tibial artery. Conclusions. In this study we identified for the first time a genome-wide significant association of a genetic variant with ERP. Our findings of a locus in the KCND3 gene not only provide insights into the genetic determinants but also into the pathophysiological mechanism of ERP, discovering a promising candidate for functional studies. Funding. For detailed information per study, see Acknowledgments.
Alexander Teumer, Teresa Trenkwalder, Thorsten Kessler, Yalda Jamshidi, Marten E. van den Berg, Bernhard Kaess, Christopher P. Nelson, Rachel Bastiaenen, Marzia De Bortoli, Alessandra Rossini, Isabel Deisenhofer, Klaus Stark, Solmaz Assa, Peter S. Braund, Claudia Cabrera, Anna F. Dominiczak, Martin Gögele, Leanne M. Hall, M. Arfan Ikram, Maryam Kavousi, Karl J. Lackner, Christian Müller, Thomas Münzel, Matthias Nauck, Sandosh Padmanabhan, Norbert Pfeiffer, Tim D. Spector, Andre G. Uitterlinden, Niek Verweij, Uwe Völker, Helen R. Warren, Mobeen Zafar, Stephan B. Felix, Jan A. Kors, Harold Snieder, Patricia B. Munroe, Cristian Pattaro, Christian Fuchsberger, Georg Schmidt, Ilja M. Nolte, Heribert Schunkert, Peter Pramstaller, Philipp S. Wild, Pim van der Harst, Bruno H. Stricker, Renate B. Schnabel, Nilesh J. Samani, Christian Hengstenberg, Marcus Dörr, Elijah R. Behr, Wibke Reinhard
Increased fibrosis is a characteristic remodeling response to biomechanical and neurohumoral stress and a determinant of cardiac mechanical and electrical dysfunction in disease. Stress-induced activation of cardiac fibroblasts (CF) is a critical step in the fibrotic response, although the precise sequence of events underlying activation of these critical cells in vivo remain unclear. Here, we test the hypothesis that a βIV-spectrin/STAT3 complex is essential for maintenance of a quiescent phenotype (basal non-activated state) in CFs. We report increased fibrosis, decreased cardiac function, and electrical impulse conduction defects in genetic and acquired mouse models of βIV-spectrin deficiency. Loss of betaIV-spectrin function promotes STAT3 nuclear accumulation and transcriptional activity, altered gene expression and CF activation. Furthermore, we demonstrate that a quiescent phenotype may be restored in βIV-spectrin deficient fibroblasts by expressing a βIV-spectrin fragment including the STAT3-binding domain or through pharmacological STAT3 inhibition. We find that in vivo STAT3 inhibition abrogates fibrosis and cardiac dysfunction in the setting of global βIV-spectrin deficiency. Finally, we demonstrate that fibroblast-specific deletion of βIV-spectrin is sufficient to induce fibrosis and decreased cardiac function. We propose that the βIV-spectrin/STAT3 complex is a determinant of fibroblast phenotype and fibrosis, with implications for remodeling response in cardiovascular disease.
Nehal J. Patel, Drew M. Nassal, Amara D. Greer-Short, Sathya D. Unudurthi, Benjamin W. Scandling, Daniel Gratz, Xianyao Xu, Anuradha Kalyanasundaram, Vadim V. Fedorov, Federica Accornero, Peter J. Mohler, Keith J. Gooch, Thomas J. Hund
Over one million Americans experience myocardial infarction (MI) annually, and the resulting scar and subsequent cardiac fibrosis gives rise to heart failure. A specialized cell-cell adhesion protein, cadherin-11 (CDH11), contributes to inflammation and fibrosis in rheumatoid arthritis, pulmonary fibrosis, and aortic valve calcification but has not been studied in myocardium after MI. MI was induced by ligation of the left anterior descending artery in mice with either heterozygous or homozygous knockout of CDH11, wild-type mice receiving bone marrow transplants from Cdh11-deficient animals, and wild-type mice treated with a functional blocking antibody against CDH11 (SYN0012). Flow cytometry revealed significant CDH11 expression in noncardiomyocyte cells after MI. Animals given SYN0012 had improved cardiac function, as measured by echocardiogram, reduced tissue remodeling, and altered transcription of inflammatory and proangiogenic genes. Targeting CDH11 reduced bone marrow–derived myeloid cells and increased proangiogenic cells in the heart 3 days after MI. Cardiac fibroblast and macrophage interactions increased IL-6 secretion in vitro. Our findings suggest that CDH11-expressing cells contribute to inflammation-driven fibrotic remodeling after MI and that targeting CDH11 with a blocking antibody improves outcomes by altering recruitment of bone marrow–derived cells, limiting the macrophage-induced expression of IL-6 by fibroblasts and promoting vascularization.
Alison K. Schroer, Matthew R. Bersi, Cynthia R. Clark, Qinkun Zhang, Lehanna H. Sanders, Antonis K. Hatzopoulos, Thomas L. Force, Susan M. Majka, Hind Lal, W. David Merryman
Perturbations in biomechanical stimuli during cardiac development contribute to congenital cardiac defects such as Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS). This study sought to identify stretch-responsive pathways involved in cardiac development. microRNA (miRNA)-Sequencing identified miR-486 as being increased in cardiomyocytes exposed to cyclic stretch in vitro (63%, p<0.002). The right ventricles of HLHS patients experience increased stretch and have a trend towards higher miR-486 levels 4.9-fold (p=0.08). Sheep RVs dilated from excessive pulmonary blood flow have 60% more miR-486 vs. control RVs (p<0.05). The left ventricles of newborn mice treated with miR-486 mimic are 16.9%-24.6% larger (p<0.01) and display 2.48 fold increase in cardiomyocyte proliferation (p<0.01). miR-486 treatment decreases FoxO1 and Smad signaling, while increasing the protein levels of Stat1. Stat1 associates with Gata4 and Serum Response Factor (Srf), two key cardiac transcription factors whose protein levels increase in response to miR-486. This is the first report of a stretch-responsive miRNA that increases the growth of the ventricle in vivo.
Stephan Lange, Indroneal Banerjee, Katrina Carrion, Ricardo Serrano, Louisa Habich, Rebecca Kameny, Luisa Lengenfelder, Nancy Dalton, Rudolph Meili, Emma Börgeson, Kirk Peterson, Marco Ricci, Joy Lincoln, Majid Ghassemian, Jeffrey R. Fineman, Juan C. del Álamo, Vishal Nigam
Background: Epicardial adipose tissue (EAT) is the visceral fat depot of the heart. Inflammation of EAT is thought to contribute to coronary artery disease (CAD). Therefore, we hypothesized that the EAT of patients with CAD would have increased inflammatory gene expression compared to controls without CAD. Methods: 26 patients referred for cardiac surgery with (n=13) or without CAD (n=13) were consented. Samples of EAT and subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) were obtained at the time of surgery. Gene expression analysis was performed using Affymetrix Human Gene 1.0 ST arrays. Differential regulation was defined as a 1.5 fold change (ANOVA p<0.05). Results: When comparing SAT and EAT of controls, 693 genes were differentially expressed. 805 genes were differentially expressed between SAT and EAT in cases. Expression of 326 genes was different between EAT of cases and controls; expression of 14 genes was increased in cases, while 312 were increased in controls. qRT-PCR confirmed that there was no difference in expression of major inflammatory genes (CCL2, CCR2, TNFα, IL6, IL8, PAI1) between cases and controls. Immunohistochemistry demonstrated that there were more macrophages in EAT than SAT, but that there was no difference in the number or activation state between cases and controls. Conclusion: In contrast to prior studies, we did not find increased inflammatory gene expression in the EAT of patients with CAD in comparison to controls without CAD. We conclude that specific adipose tissue organ, rather than CAD status, is responsible for the majority of differential gene expression.
Timothy P. Fitzgibbons, Nancy Lee, Khanh-Van Tran, Sara Nicoloro, Mark Kelly, Stanley K.C. Tam, Michael P. Czech
The cardiac hormone atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) is a central regulator of blood volume and a therapeutic target in hypertension and heart failure. Enhanced ANP activity in such conditions through inhibition of the degradative enzyme neprilysin has shown clinical efficacy, but is complicated by consequences from simultaneous accumulation of a heterogeneous array of other hormones. Targets for specific ANP enhancement have not been available. Here, we describe a cis-acting antisense transcript (NPPA-AS1) which negatively regulates ANP expression in human cardiomyocytes. We show that NPPA-AS1 regulates ANP expression via facilitating interaction of the NPPA repressor REST (RE1-silencing transcription factor) binding to its promoter, rather than base-pairing with ANP mRNA. Expression of ANP mRNA and NPPA-AS1 was increased and correlated in isolated strained human cardiomyocytes and in hearts from patients with advanced heart failure. Further, inhibition of NPPA-AS1 in vitro and in vivo resulted in increased myocardial expression of ANP, increased circulating ANP, increased renal cGMP and lower blood pressure. The effects of NPPA-AS1 inhibition on NPPA expression in human cardiomyocytes were further marked under cell-strain conditions. Collectively, these results implicate the antisense transcript NPPA-AS1 as part of a physiologic self-regulatory ANP circuit and a viable target for specific ANP augmentation.
Selvi Celik, Mardjaneh Karbalaei Sadegh, Michael Morley, Carolina Roselli, Patrick T. Ellinor, Thomas Cappola, J. Gustav Smith, Olof Gidlof
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common heart rhythm disorder and a major cause of stroke. Unfortunately, current therapies for AF are suboptimal, largely because the molecular mechanisms underlying AF are poorly understood. Since the autonomic nervous system is thought to increase vulnerability to AF, we investigated in a rapid atrial pacing (RAP) canine model the anatomic and electrophysiological characteristics of autonomic remodeling in different regions of the left atrium. RAP led to marked hypertrophy of parent nerve bundles in the posterior left atrium (PLA), resulting in a global increase in parasympathetic and sympathetic innervation throughout the left atrium. Parasympathetic fibers were more heterogeneously distributed in the PLA when compared to other left atrial regions; this led to greater fractionation and disorganization of AF electrograms in the PLA. Computational modeling revealed that heterogeneously distributed parasympathetic activity exacerbates sympathetic substrate for wave break and reentry. We further discovered that levels of Nerve Growth Factor (NGF) were greatest in the left atrial appendage (LAA), where AF was most organized. Preferential NGF release by the LAA - likely a direct function of frequency and regularity of atrial stimulation - may have important implications for creation of a vulnerable AF substrate.
Georg Gussak, Anna Pfenniger, Lisa M. Wren, Mehul Gilani, Wenwei Zhang, Shin Yoo, David A. Johnson, Amy Burrell, Brandon Benefield, Gabriel M. Knight, Bradley P. Knight, Rod Passman, Jeffrey J. Goldberger, Gary Aistrup, J. Andrew Wasserstrom, Yohannes Shiferaw, Rishi Arora
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