Sulforaphane Effects on Cardiac Function and Calcium-Handling-Related Proteins in 2 Experimental Models of Heart Disease: Ischemia-Reperfusion and Infarction

Sulforaphane (SFN) is a natural exogenous antioxidant from cruciferous vegetables already shown to improve cardiac function in cardiovascular diseases. The aim of this study was to analyze the effect of SFN treatment on the cardiac function in 2 experimental models of heart disease, ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) and myocardial infarction (MI), and whether an improvement of the cardiac function could be associated with a modulation of calcium-handling proteins. The study was divided into 2 main experiments: experiment 1, ex vivo with the I/R model and experiment 2, in vivo with the MI model. In the I/R model, rats were divided into control and SFN (0.5 mg/kg/d intraperitoneally for 3 days) groups, and the hearts were submitted to global ischemia (20 minutes) followed by reperfusion (20 minutes) in a Langendorff apparatus. SFN did not change left ventricle systolic and diastolic pressures but increased the contractility and relaxation indexes after 20 minutes of reperfusion. These functional changes were accompanied by a decreased protein expression of ryanodine receptor (RyR) and increased expression of p-phospholamban/phospholamban ratio, without alteration in the sarco/endoplasmic calcium ATPase expression. In the MI model, rats were randomly divided into Sham, MI (MI induced by left coronary artery ligation), Sham + SFN (5 mg/kg/d intraperitoneally for 25 days), and MI + SFN groups. Although SFN did not affect cardiac function, it led to a decreased RyR protein expression and reactive oxygen species levels in the left ventricular of the MI + SFN group. These data indicate that SFN modulates calcium-handling proteins and, thus, cardiac inotropism/lusitropism especially when administered previously to an ischemic event.