The Protective Effect of Puerarin Preconditioning against Myocardial Ischemia-reperfusion Injury in Rats

Objective: To investigate whether puerarin preconditioning has protective effect against myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury in rats compared with ischemic preconditioning. Methods: Rat heart ischemia-reperfusion injury (I/R) was induced by occluding the left anterior descending coronary artery for 45 minutes and reperfusion for 120 minutes. Fourty-four rats were randomly divided into four groups (11 in each): (1) sham operation (group sham); (2) I/R model only (group I/R) (3) ischemic preconditioning (group IPC, 3 times of ischemia 5 min and reperfusion 5 min prior to I/R), and (4) puerarin (PUE) pretreated group (group PUE, 100mg/kg of PUE were intravenously injected 5 minutes before ischemia) . TTC staining method was used to determine the myocardial infarct size. Cardiac myocytes apoptosis was detected by TUNEL. The activity of creatine kinase (CK) and concentration of troponin T (TnT) in serum were measured simultaneously. Results: Myocardial infarct size, cardiomyocytes apoptosis index, the activity of CK and concentration of TnT in serum of group I/R were obviously higher than those in group sham (P0.05 or P0.01). Compared with group I/R, all these parameters were significantly reduced in IPC and PUE pretreated groups (P0.05 or P0.01). Furthermore, there was no significant difference between IPC and puerarin pretreated groups in all these parameters (P0.05). Conclusions: Puerarin preconditioning (administrating puerarin before ischemia) can significantly reduce myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury in rats, and its proctective effect is similar to that of IPC.