Ischemic preconditioning maintains cardioprotection in aging normotensive and spontaneously hypertensive rats

We determined whether ischemic preconditioning could reduce infarct size and improve cardiac function in both aging normotensive Wistar-Kyoto rats (WKY) and spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR). The left anterior descending coronary artery was occluded for 1 h followed by 3 h reperfusion in aging (∼16 months old) SHR rats and age-matched WKY rats. Hearts were either preconditioned or not (control group) prior to 1 h of coronary artery occlusion. The preconditioning regimen consisted of three cycles of 3 min occlusion followed by 5 min reperfusion applied prior to the subsequent 1 h occlusion. In WKY (n = 12 each group), the risk zone was similar in the control (51 ± 2%) and preconditioned group (46 ± 2%; p = 0.1). Preconditioning significantly reduced infarct size (as a percentage of the ischemic risk zone) (24 ± 6%) compared to controls (51 ± 5%; p = 0.0026). In SHR rats (n = 9 each group), the risk zone was smaller in the preconditioning group (41 ± 3%) than in the control group (51 ± 3%; p = 0.035). Infarct size (as % of ischemic risk zone) was also significantly reduced in the preconditioned group (13 ± 4%) compared to controls (62 ± 5%; p < 0.0001). For both WKY and SHR rats, for any sized risk zone the infarct size was smaller in preconditioned hearts compared with the control hearts. Preconditioning improved aspects of LV function during ischemia and reperfusion phase in SHR rats, but these benefits were not observed in the WKY rats. Preconditioning maintains powerful cardioprotection in aging normotensive hearts as well as aging hypertrophied hearts.