Prolonged cold ischemia in rat cardiac allografts promotes ischemia-reperfusion injury and the development of graft coronary artery disease in a linear fashion.
Both EA-pretreatment and routine EA of PC 6 and BL 15 can down-regulate blood TC, TG and HDL contents, raise serum HDL level and suppress the increased expression of CD 40 L and MMP-9 proteins of coronary artery tissue in rats with coronary atherosclerotic heart disease, which may contribute to their effect in improving CHD.
We used apolipoprotein E gene knockout (ApoE KO) rats to induce hypercholesterolemia through a special high cholesterol/bile salt diet (Paigen diet), then analyzed aortic and coronary atherosclerosis lesions and the myocardial injury in order to establish a novel small animal model of coronary atherosclerosis.
Rat coronary atherosclerosis heart disease model can be successfully established by feeding with high-fat diet and intraperitoneal injection of VD3, the permeability of coronary artery in coronary heart disease rat model is significantly increased, which may be related to up-regulation of MMP-9, CD40L, TNF-α and CRP expression.