Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
Pivot Concepts:   Target Concepts:
Query: UMLS:C0018801 (heart failure)
 72,216 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of human morbidity and mortality. Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is the most common form of cardiomyopathy associated with heart failure. Here, we report that cardiac-specific knockout of Dicer, a gene encoding a RNase III endonuclease essential for microRNA (miRNA) processing, leads to rapidly progressive DCM, heart failure, and postnatal lethality. Dicer mutant mice show misexpression of cardiac contractile proteins and profound sarcomere disarray. Functional analyses indicate significantly reduced heart rates and decreased fractional shortening of Dicer mutant hearts. Consistent with the role of Dicer in animal hearts, Dicer expression was decreased in end-stage human DCM and failing hearts and, most importantly, a significant increase of Dicer expression was observed in those hearts after left ventricle assist devices were inserted to improve cardiac function. Together, our studies demonstrate essential roles for Dicer in cardiac contraction and indicate that miRNAs play critical roles in normal cardiac function and under pathological conditions.
 ...
PMID:Targeted deletion of Dicer in the heart leads to dilated cardiomyopathy and heart failure. 1825 89

Base excision repair (BER) is the major pathway to counteract the genotoxic effect of endogenous DNA damaging agents. The present study investigated the enzymatic activities and gene transcription of DNA glycosylases initiating BER in an experimental heart failure (HF) model. Rats were subjected to myocardial infarction or sham-operated. Twenty-eight days after surgical intervention cell-free protein extracts, total RNA and genomic DNA were isolated to analyze DNA glycosylase and AP-endonuclease activities, transcript levels of DNA glycosylases and accumulation of oxidative DNA damage. The capacity to remove major oxidation products (e.g., formamidopyrimidine and 5-hydroxycytosine) was significantly increased in the border zone of infarcted area, while the capacity to remove the highly mutagenic 8-oxoguanine residue was enhanced both in non-infarcted and infarcted areas of left ventricle (LV). DNA glycosylase activities towards 3-methyladenine and uracil were up-regulated in infarcted and non-infarcted areas of LV, indicating that generation of alkylated and deaminated base lesions on DNA increase during HF. Finally, we found no difference in accumulation of oxidative DNA damage in myocardial tissue between rats with post-myocardial infarction and sham-operated rats. This up-regulation of activities, initiating the BER pathway, could play an important role during HF by counteracting the effect of genotoxic stress, structural damage of tissue and myocardial remodeling.
 ...
PMID:Up-regulation of myocardial DNA base excision repair activities in experimental heart failure. 1948 77

Caspase-activated DNase (CAD) is a double-strand-specific endonuclease that is responsible for the cleavage of nucleosomal spacer regions and subsequent chromatin condensation during apoptosis. Given that several endonucleases (eg, DNase I, DNase II, and Endog) have been shown to regulate pathological cardiac hypertrophy, we questioned whether CAD, which is critical for the induction of DNA fragmentation, plays a pivotal role in pressure overload-elicited cardiac hypertrophy. A CAD-knockout mouse model was generated and subjected to aortic banding for 8 weeks. The extent of cardiac hypertrophy was evaluated by echocardiography and pathological and molecular analyses. Our results demonstrated that the disruption of CAD attenuated pressure overload-induced cardiac hypertrophy, fibrosis, and cardiac dysfunction. Conversely, transgenic mice with cardiac-specific overexpression of CAD showed an aggravated cardiac hypertrophic response to chronic pressure overload. Mechanistically, we discovered that the expression and activation of mitogen-activated protein kinase-extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 was significantly reduced in the CAD-knockout hearts compared with the control hearts; however, they were greatly increased in the CAD-overexpressing hearts after aortic banding. Similar results were observed in ex vivo cultured neonatal rat cardiomyocytes after treatment with angiotensin II for 48 hours. These data indicate that CAD functions as a necessary modulator of the hypertrophic response by regulating the mitogen-activated protein kinase-extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 signaling pathway in the heart. Our study suggests that CAD might be a novel target for the treatment of pathological cardiac hypertrophy and heart failure.
...
PMID:Novel role for caspase-activated DNase in the regulation of pathological cardiac hypertrophy. 2564 92