Polyunsaturated fatty acid significantly improves contractile performance of cultured cardiomyocytes

Abstract

Although cardiac tissue equivalent reconstructed in vitro would be useful for treatment of cardiac diseases, its twitch stress is markedly lower than that in native myocardium. Polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA), which is not synthesized in mammalian, mediates various functions in tissues including myocardium. However, conventional culture medium contains little lipid. We previously found that some PUFAs contents in cultured rat cardiomyocytes were significantly lower than those in neonatal myocardium, and that contractile performance of the cultured cardiomyocytes can be elevated with PUFA supplementation. In the present study, we evaluated effects of simultaneous supplementation of docosahexaenoic (DHA) and arachidonic (AA) acids on the performance. Four days after the onset of supplementation of 10 μM DHA and 20 μM AA, the performance was significantly higher (P<0.05) than that in cells without the supplementation. The results suggest that PUFAs supplementation may be crucial on the improvement of contractile performance in cultured cardiomyocytes.