YiQiFuMai powder injection ameliorates chronic heart failure through cross-talk between adipose tissue and cardiomyocytes via up-regulation of circulating adipokine omentin

YiQiFuMai Powder Injection (YQFM) is widely used in clinical practice for the treatment of heart failure (HF). However, its functional molecular mechanism remains to be fully uncovered. Our present study aimed to elucidate the impact of YQFM and underlying mechanisms on coronary artery ligation (CAL)-induced HF. Our results exhibited that YQFM significantly mitigated CAL-induced HF via meliorating the left ventricular contractile function and reducing the serum content of creatine kinase MB (CK-MB), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), interleukin-6 (IL-6), troponin (Tn), myosin, myoglobin (MYO) and myocilin (MYOC). Then, the relevance between circulating omentin level and cardiac function was investigated and we found that serum omentin levels positively associated with ejection fraction and negatively correlated with NT-proBNP content. Further, the effect of YQFM on cardiac function and omentin change in 1, 7 and 14 days CAL-induced HF mice was evaluated and the omentin secretion in isolated subcutaneous (SCAT) and epicardial adipose tissue (EAT) after YQFM treatment were detected. YQFM could increase the circulating omentin content both in 14 days CAL-induced HF mice and isolated EAT. And increased omentin in conditioned medium (CM) could inhibit simulated ischemic/reperfusion (SI/R)-induced cardiomyocytes apoptosis. Moreover, YQFM could ameliorate myocardial apoptosis via positive regulation of AMPK, PI3 K/Akt and negative regulation of MAPKs signaling pathways. Ginsenoside Rd might partially mediated omentin-dependent protective effect of YQFM. Our findings indicated that regulation of cross-talk between adipose tissue and cardiomyocytes might be a potential target through which YQFM exerts cardioprotective effect apart from direct cardiomyocytes protection.