Hypoxia Modelling in Ventricular Cells Using Beeler-Reuter Model

In this study we investigated hypoxia effect on activation potential and ionic currents of a ventricular cell using the ionic-based theoretical Beeler-Reuter model. We simulated hypoxia and anoxia phenomena at the level of individual ionic currents and ionic concentrations. We compared the obtained results with several published works on the effects of hypoxia on fast and late sodium current, calcium current and delayed potassium current. Although quite often hypoxia alone induces small modification in the shape of activation potential, in several cases the anoxia dependent opening of potassium channels may induce prolongation of the action potential and early after-depolarizations that can develop dangerous spontaneous tachycardia. The Beeler-Reuter model is most sensitive at the modification of potassium and calcium currents. Several times a relatively small alteration of an internal voltage-dependent parameter in the ionic current equation induces a serious modification of the resulting activation potential function. Compared with several quite complex ventricular models, the investigated relatively simple Beeler-Reuter model used with parameterized voltage-dependent parameters yields good results in hypoxia study.