| Heart failure serves as a terminal stage in various cardiovascular diseases. It is one of the most important stages in cardiogenic diseases. Cardiac hypertrophy is associated with pathological gene program that activated by various signal pathways. Recently, calcineurin has been detected as a multifunctional phosphatase, and wildly distributed in cardiac tissue. It has been showed that calcineurin-dependent signal pathway may play an important role in the development of cardiac hypertrophy. When cardiac load increased, angiotensin II, endothelin-1, human urotensin II would stimulate the elevation of intracellular Ca2+, which result in the activation of CaN. Activated calcineurin dephosphorylates a family of transcription factor known as NFAT, which translocated from cytoplasm to nucleus and involved in the modulation of transcription activity and expression of various genes through interacting with many transcription factors and signal pathways. Eventually, pathological cardiac hypertrophy is accompanied by up-regulation ofβ-MHC expression and down-regulation ofα-MHC, increasing protein and nucleic: acid synthesis.It was reported that heart failure patients have enhanced calcinerin activity in cardiac muscle and peripherial blood in which positive correlations was observed between calcineurin activity and enhanced left ventricular mass. However, the expression of CaN mRNA in peripherial blood and cardiac muscle was still unclear. In this study, we investigated the relationship of calcineurin mRNA level in peripheral blood and myocardium of patients with heart failure, which will help us to understand the action of CaN in the mechanism of heart failure.Objective: To investigate the relationship of calcineurin mRNA level between peripheral lymphocytes and cardiac muscles of patients with chronic heart failure.Methods: Thirty-eight congestive heart failure patients with rheumatic mitral valve disease were selected who underwent valvular replacement operation from Jan 2007 to Aug 2007 in Shandong provincial hospital and twelve cases of healthy person were included as controls. Cardiac function parameters were measured by echocardiography. The mRNA level of CnAαand CnAβof left ventricular anterior papillary muscle and peripheral lymphocytes was determined by semi-quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction.Results: CaN mRNA level in lymphocyte was positively correlated with that in cardiac muscle (CnAαmRNA r=0.820, p < 0.01; CnAβmRNA r=0.875, p < 0.01) . Compared with the normal people, CnAαand CnAβmRNA level in circulating lymphocytes and cardiac muscle was higher in heart failure patients. CnAβmRNA level was up-regulated significantly with cardiac function class classified by New York Heart Association (peripheral lymphocytes r= 0.877, p<0.01; cardiac muscle r=0.805, p<0.01) .Conclusions: The peripheral lymphocyte CaN mRNA level can represent the level of cardiac tissue. Closed correlation was found between CnA 3 mRNA and heart failure. |
