Why the study?
Whether and how stress affects the expression of components of the intracellular environment in the heart is unknown.
Stress induces significant alterations in cardiac gene expression, a process modulated by beta-2 adrenoceptors, likely as an adaptive reaction to sustain heart function and protect cardiomyocytes.
Suggests β2-AR shapes cardiac transcriptional stress responses in animals; leaves open human relevance and therapeutic targeting.
The stress response is adaptive and aims to guarantee survival. However, the persistence of a stressor can culminate in pathology. Catecholamines released as part of the stress response over activate beta adrenoceptors (β-AR) in the heart. Whether and how stress affects the expression of components of the intracellular environment in the heart is still, however, unknown. This paper used microarray to analyze the gene expression in the left ventricle wall of rats submitted to foot shock stress, treated or not treated with the selective β 2 -AR antagonist ICI118,551 (ICI), compared to those of non-stressed rats also treated or not with ICI, respectively. The main findings were that stress induces changes in gene expression in the heart and that β 2 -AR plays a role in this process. The vast majority of genes disregulated by stress were exclusive for only one of the comparisons, indicating that, in the same stressful situation, the profile of gene expression in the heart is substantially different when the β 2 -AR is active or when it is blocked. Stress induced alterations in the expression of such a large number of genes seems to be an adaptive reaction, aimed at sustaining heart function and protecting cardiomyocytes from apoptosis.
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Carvalho et al. (2021) studied this question.
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