Effects of pressure or volume overload hypertrophy on passive stiffness in isolated adult mammalian cardiac muscle cells. Kato, Satoshi, Masaaki Koide, George Cooper, Michael R. Zile. Gazes Cardiac Research Institute, Cardiology Division of the Department of Medicine, Medical University of South Carolina, and the Ralph H. Johnson Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Charleston, South Carolina
APStracts 3:0277H, 1996.
It has been hypothesized that the changes in myocardial stiffness induced by chronic hemodynamic overloading are dependent on changes in the passive stiffness of the cardiac muscle cell (cardiocyte). However, no previous studies have examined the passive constitutive properties of cardiocytes isolated from animals with myocardial hypertrophy. Accordingly, changes in relative passive stiffness of cardiocytes isolated from animals with chronic pressure or volume overload hypertrophy were determined by examining the effects of anisosmotic stress on cardiocyte size. Anisosmotic stress was produced by altering superfusate osmolarity. Hypertrophied cardiocytes were enzymatically isolated from 16 adult cats with right ventricular (RV) pressure overload hypertrophy induced by pulmonary artery banding (PAB) and from 6 adults cats with right ventricular volume overload hypertrophy induced by creating an atrial septal defect (ASD). Left ventricular (LV) cardiocytes from each cat served as non-hypertrophied, normally loaded, same animal controls. Superfusate osmolarity was decreased from 305 +/- 3 to 135 +/- 5 mOsm and increased to 645 +/- 4 mOsm. During anisosmotic stress, there were no significant differences between hypertrophied RV and normal LV cardiocytes in pressure overload PAB cats with respect to percent change in cardiocyte area (47 +/- 2% in RV vs 48 +/- 2% in LV), diameter (46 +/- 3% in RV vs 48 +/- 2 % in LV), cardiocyte length (2.4 +/- 0.2% in RV vs 2.0 +/- 0.3% in LV), or sarcomere length (1.5 +/- 0.1% in RV vs 1.3 +/- 0.3 % in LV). Likewise, there were no significant differences in cardiocyte strain between hypertrophied RV and normal LV cardiocytes from ASD cats. In conclusion, the presence of either chronic pressure overload hypertrophy or chronic volume overload hypertrophy did not alter the cardiocyte response to anisosmotic stress. Thus, chronic overload hypertrophy did not alter relative passive cardiocyte stiffness.

Received 1 December 1995; accepted in final form 12 June 1996.
APS Manuscript Number H1118-5.
Article publication pending Am. J. Physiol. (Heart Circ. Physiology).
ISSN 1080-4757 Copyright 1996 The American Physiological Society.
Published in APStracts on 25 July 1996