Immunohistochemical reaction of myocardial fibers with actin antiserum in autopsy cases of myocardial infarction.

The purpose of this study was to determine the immunoreactivity of myocardial actin filaments with actin antiserum and to examine the significance of its application to diseased human cardiac muscle. The actin was extracted and purified from chicken gizzards. Anti-actin rabbit serum was prepared and purified by affinity chromatography and defined by an immunoblotting test. Using the avidin-biotin-peroxidase complex (ABC) method, the actin antiserum was applied to paraffin sections prepared from hearts taken from routine autopsies of patients who had died of myocardial infarction. Reactivity was shown to be completely lost, not only in necrotized fibers, but also in non-specific degenerative fibers which could be identified by their eosinophilic cytoplasm with pyknotic nuclei, and clearly remaining and/or diminished cross-striations stained with hematoxylin-eosin. In contrast, hypertrophic myocardial fibers adjacent to granulation or scar tissue and those adjacent to infarcted foci exhibited a more intense reaction. These results indicated that the immunohistochemical reaction of actin filaments can be used for the easy detection of very mild degrees of degeneration of cardial muscle fibers, and for hypertrophic fibers adjacent to diseased foci. Studies of the immunoreactivity of actin protein suggestive of alteration at the molecular level might yield morphological clues regarding the nature of functional activity in the contraction of cardiac fibers.