Effects of Carvedilol on Cardiomyocyte Apoptosis and Gene Expression In Vivo after Ischemia-Reperfusion in Rats

The effects of carvedilol on cardiomyocyte apoptosis and expression of bcl-2, bax genesfollowing ischemia (0.5 h) and reperfusion (48 h) in vivo and the possible biological mechanism ofcarvedilol inhibiting cardiomyocyte apoptosis were studied. The left anterior descending artery inWistar rats were ligated to establish ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) models. The model animals were di-vided into two groups: I/R group, the model rats not subject to other treatments except ischemia-reperfusion (n=8); carvedilol-treated group (n=8), I/R model rats treated with carvedilol. Eightrats in the sham-operated group were subjected to only experimental open operation. The number ofapoptotic cardiomyocyte was determined by TUNEL staining. Immunohistochemistry and in situ hy-bridization histochemistry (ISHH) were used to detect the expression of bcl-2 and bax genes. Imageprocessing system was used to quantitatively dispose the positive metric substances of both immuno-histochemistry and ISHH through the average optical den