Exogenous NAD+ administration significantly protects against myocardial ischemia/reperfusion injury in rat model

Acute myocardial infarction is one of the leading causes for death around the world. Although essential for successful interventional therapy, it is inevitably complicated by reperfusion injury. Thus effective approaches to reduce ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury are still critically needed. To test our hypothesis that intravenous administration of NAD(+) can attenuate I/R injury by reducing apoptotic damage and enhancing antioxidant capacity, we used a rat mode of myocardial I/R. Our study found that administration of 10-20 mg/kg NAD(+) can dose dependently reduce myocardial infarct induced by I/R, with an approximately 85% reduction of the infarct at the dosage of 20 mg/kg NAD(+). We further found that the injection of NAD(+) can significantly decrease I/R-induced apoptotic damage in the heart: NAD(+) administration can both decrease the TUNEL signals, Bax, cleaved caspase-3 levels and increase the Bcl-XL levels in the rats that are subjected to myocardial I/R injury. NAD(+) administration can also significantly attenuate I/R-induced decreases in SOD activity and SOD-2 protein levels in the hearts. NAD(+) can profoundly decrease myocardial I/R injury at least partially by attenuating apoptotic damage and enhancing the antioxidant capacity, thus suggesting that NAD(+) may become a promising therapeutic agent for myocardial I/R injury.