Abstract
In order to protect the heart from unfavorable conditions such as myocardial ischemia or heart failure, it seems necessarily to investigate what components are related to such conditions or what drugs affect them. For this purpose, at symposium No. 40 “Recent Advances in Cardiac Protection” at the 75th Annual Meeting of The Japanese Pharmacological Society held in Kumamoto City, the following 6 studies were presented: (1) The Role of Sarcoglycan Complex in Chronic Heart Failure (H. Yoshida et al.); (2) Heart Failure and Proinflammatory Cytokines (T. Kubota et al.); (3) Fundamental Strategies and Current Topics for Cardiac Protection During Open-Heart Surgery (R. Tominaga et al.); (4) Role of Tetrahydrobiopterin in Myocardial Ischemia/ Reperfusion Injury (K. Noguchi et al.); (5) Cardiac Protection by Nitric Oxide (T. Obata); (6) Reconsideration of Anti-oxidants as Protective Drugs on Ischemic Myocardium (K. Ichihara et al.). This review gathers the reports of studies presented at this symposium.