Clinical utility of endothelial function testing - Ready for prime time?

The treatment of rats with Boc-Asp-fmk (BAF), a pancaspase inhibitor, which was started on the third day after myocardial infarction, resulted in an alleviation of ventricular] remodeling and dysfunction during the chronic stage of 12 weeks after infarction by blocking apoptosis of granulation tissue cells consisting of myofibroblasts, fibroblasts, and small vessels in the old infarct areas, which accompanied thickening of the infarct wall. In addition, many of the α-smooth muscle actin-positive myofibroblast-like cells made bundles and were running parallel to the surviving cardiomyocytes in old infarcts of the BAF-treated hearts, which were (by electron microscopy) smooth muscle cells with contractile phenotype.