Pretreatment with hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers protect isolated rat heart from myocardial infarction.

This study was designed to investigate whether polymerized human placenta hemoglobin (PolyPHb) pretreatment provided protection to the heart after ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury. After 10-min basal perfusion, isolated Sprague-Dawley rat hearts were pretreated with 0.1 gHb/dL PolyPHb and subjected to I/R injury. PolyPHb pretreatment greatly reduced the decreases in left ventricular developed pressure (LVDP), maximum LVDP increase and decrease rate (+/-dp/dt), and the increase in left ventricular end-diastolic pressure (LVEDP) as compared to the control group. Moreover, the myocardial infarction and troponin-I release were significantly reduced in the pre-HBOCs group. Therefore, PolyPHb pretreatment was protective to the isolated I/R heart.