title: Influence of chronic alcohol ingestion on acetaldehyde-induced depression of rat cardiac contractile function.
abstract: Long-standing ethanol consumption acts as a chronic cardiac stress and often leads to alcoholic cardiomyopathy. We have recently shown that the acute ethanol-induced depression in myocardial contraction was substantiated by chronic ethanol ingestion. Acetaldehyde (ACA), the main ethanol metabolite, has been considered to play a role in ethanol-induced cardiac dysfunction. To evaluate the ACA-induced cardiac contractile response following chronic ethanol ingestion, mechanical properties were examined using left ventricular papillary muscles and myocytes from rats fed with control or ethanol-enriched diet. Muscles and myocytes were electrically stimulated at 0.5 Hz and contractile properties analysed included peak tension development (PTD) and peak shortening (PS). Intracellular Ca(2+) transients were measured as fura-2 fluorescence intensity changes (DeltaFFI). Papillary muscles from ethanol-consuming animals exhibited reduced baseline PTD and attenuated responsiveness to increase of extracellular Ca(2+). Acute ACA (0.3-10 mM) addition elicited a dose-dependent depression of PTD. However, the inhibition magnitude was significantly reduced in ethanol-treated rats. Myocytes from both control and ethanol-treated rats exhibited comparable ACA-induced depression in both PS and DeltaFFI. Collectively, these data suggest that the ACA-induced depression of myocardial contraction is reduced at the multicellular level, but unchanged at the single cell level, following chronic ethanol ingestion.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmacology, Physiology, and Therapeutics, University of North Dakota School of Medicine, 501 N. Columbia Road, Grand Forks, ND 58203, USA.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ren
authors.forename: R A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Brown
mesh_terms: D000079:Acetaldehyde / Q000494:pharmacology*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D000431:Ethanol / Q000494:pharmacology*; D006352:Heart Ventricles / Q000166:cytology; D008297:Male; D008856:Microscopy, Fluorescence; D009200:Myocardial Contraction / Q000187:drug effects*; D010210:Papillary Muscles / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology; D051381:Rats; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley
chemical_list: D000431:Ethanol; D000079:Acetaldehyde