| Budget Amount *help |
¥1,800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,800,000)
Fiscal Year 1988: ¥500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥500,000)
Fiscal Year 1987: ¥1,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,300,000)
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| Research Abstract |
We have reported that myocardial abnormalities quite similar to those of human hypertrophic cardiomyopathy occurs spontaneously in some the rat of WKY/NCrj strain; the rat showed, in the absence of blood pressure elevation, marked cardiac hypertrophy, i.e., greater heart weight and a disproportionately thicker ventricular septum in relation to left ventricular free wall than did rats with normal hearts; furthermore, these rats with a marked cardiac hypertrophy had a marked abnormal arrangement of cardiac muscle fibers and myofibrils, a narrowing of the left ventricular cavity, myocardial fibrosis, and mural arteries with an abnormal wall thickening (Jpn Circ J 51: 573-588, 1987).
The purpose of the present project is to establish a strain of rats with a higher incidence of marked cardiac hypertrophy, which shoud be a useful animal model for the study of the human disease. Electrocardiographic recordings revealed that a high QRS complex, an axis deviation of the QRS, and a high T wave are characteristic of the with a marked cardiac hypertrophy. On the basis of these findings, selective breeding of rats with a marked cardiac hypertophy and of rats with a normal heart as the control is now being continued. However, the establishment of these strains may require a long process of selection, since there is an evidence that the underlying gene abnormality has already spread widely in this strain; i.e., the WKY/NCrj strain is an established inbred one persisting for more than 30 generations and quite identical abnormalities of the heart occur in the strain of rats from which the WKY/NCrj diverged.
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