Abstract:

AIM: To establish the rat model of ischemic chronic heart failure by coronary artery ligation combining with exhaustive swimming. METHODS: 40 adult rats were treated with coronary artery ligation, after 4 weeks cardiac function measurement were conducted by ultrasonography. Rats with LVEF below 40% are considered as successful model duplication. 11 rats were collected for the coronary artery ligation group, while the rest (whose LVEF were bigger than 40%) were pushed to swim for 1 h per day by 15 days to promote the model formation which 8 rats were collected for exhaustion with ligation group. Left ventricular function indexes, brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) and cardiac histomorphologic changing were checked, and compared with the Control group (10 rats). RESULTS: LVEF of exhaustion with ligation group was (38.70±10.10)%, coronary artery ligation group (39.20±11.10)%, which was obviously decreasing (P＜0.01) compared with that of the control group (84.60±3.64)%. LVEDP of exhaustion with ligation group was (11.5±1.3) mm Hg, coronary artery ligation group［(10.68±4.45) mm Hg］, which was obviously increasing (P＜0.01) compared with that of the Control group［(4.4±0.2) mm Hg］. The BNP level of exhaustion with ligation group was (561.0±21.0) μg/L, coronary artery ligation group (548.6±25.8) μg/L, which was obviously increasing (P＜0.01) compared with that of control group［(366.2±21.8) μg/L］. There are lots of red myocardial cells with stripe clear in the control group based on Masson's trichrome staining, but there are so many blue collagenous fibers instead of myocardial cells in exhaustion with ligation group and coronary artery ligation group. The standard-reaching rate of model was about 35% at 4 weeks after operation, while final standard-reaching rate rose to about 62% after exhausting swimming. Although the difference between the indexes of the coronary artery ligation group and the post ligation group was not significant, the rate of improvement was significant (P＜0.01). CONCLUSION: Ligation of coronary artery combined with swimming exhaustion can establish ischemic chronic heart failure model, which is more economic and can obtain high success rate, thus is suitable to generalization.

Key words: coronary artery ligation, exhaustive swimming, heart failure, rat