Abstract

FUENMAYOR A, Abdel J; GONZALEZ, Jorge  and  FUENMAYOR P, Abdel M. Efectos de la vitamina E sobre la toxicidad digitálica en un modelo experimental. Rev. costarric. cardiol [online]. 2006, vol.8, n.3, pp.33-35. ISSN 1409-4142.

Background: Cardiac glycosides are widely used and frequently induce cardiac toxicity that often manifests as cardiac arrhythmias mediated by triggered activity. Triggered arrhythmias are produced by ionic oscillating currents across the cell membrane during the repolarization phase of the cardiac cycle. Vitamin E stabilizes cell membranes and could protect against arrhythmias induced by digitalis toxicity. Methods: In order to evaluate this hypothesis we studied 40 male, adult, Wistar rats. Twenty animals received digoxin (30 mg/Kg intraperitoneally) and 20 received placebo. Ten animals of each group received Vitamin E and the other 10 received Vitamin E-placebo. Results: The group that received digoxin evidenced a significantly higher mortality and greater incidence of sinus bradicardia, A-V block, supraventricular and ventricular arrhythmias. There were no significant differences between the vitamin E treated animals and the vitamin E-placebo groups. We conclude that in this model vitamin E does not protect against digitalis cardiac toxicity.

Keywords : Digitalis toxicity; Vitamin E; Wistar rats.

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