[Myocardial uptake of 125I-BMIPP in rats treated with adriamycin].

The ability of 125I-BMIPP in assessing myocardial mitochondrial function was investigated in rats treated with adriamycin (ADR). Intraperitoneal administration of ADR (4 mg/kg) for 6 days significantly decreased a ratio of heart/body weight as compared with the control rats. The light and electron microscopic analysis showed that ADR produced histological damages mainly in the mitochondria with minimal changes in the myofibril and nucleus. In the study of mitochondrial respiratory function, oxygen consumption with adding ADP, respiratory control ratio and ADP/O ratio were significantly lower in ADR rats than control rats. While myocardial uptake of 201TlCl was not different between the two groups, the uptake of 125I-BMIPP corrected by blood counts was significantly reduced in ADR rats (3.1 +/- 0.4 vs. 2.3 +/- 0.8, p less than 0.05) and the reduction was mainly observed in the mitochondrial fraction. These results suggest that impairment of mitochondrial function by ADR produced a reduction in mitochondrial and consequently myocardial uptakes of 125I-BMIPP. The observation suggests that 125I-BMIPP myocardial scintigraphy could be a useful method for determining mitochondrial function in patients with myocardial diseases.