Published in:
01-09-2014 | Invited Editorial
microRNA-144: the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of remote ischemic conditioning?
Author:
Karin Przyklenk
Published in:
Basic Research in Cardiology
|
Issue 5/2014
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Excerpt
Remote ischemic preconditioning (RIPC) is the intriguing phenomenon whereby brief episodes of ischemia–reperfusion applied in a distant organ or tissue render the heart resistant to infarction [
29,
37]. Most notably, there is compelling evidence that robust cardioprotection can be triggered by transient 5-min periods of limb ischemia, achieved in a simple and cost-effective manner by inflation–deflation of a standard blood pressure cuff [
19]—a discovery that has spurred the clinical investigation of RIPC in patients undergoing cardiac surgery and percutaneous intervention [
2,
5,
12,
14,
24,
25,
34]. However, despite the translational appeal and promise of this apparently simple strategy, two fundamental and not-so-simple questions continue to bedevil investigators in the field [
27,
30,
31]: what is the identity of the protective factor(s), and how is the protective stimulus communicated from its source (presumably the remote tissue) to the heart? …
