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Intracellular Reactive Oxygen Species Mediate The Linkage Of Na+/K+-Atpase To Hypertrophy And Its Marker Genes In Cardiac Myocytes, Joseph I. Shapiro, Amir Askari, Zijian Xie, Peter Kometiani, Jie Li, Jiang Liu

Pharmaceutical Science and Research

We showed before that in cardiac myocytes partial inhibition of Na⁺/K⁺-ATPase by nontoxic concentrations of ouabain causes hypertrophy and transcriptional regulations of growth-related marker genes through multiple Ca²⁺-dependent signal pathways many of which involve Ras and p42/44 mitogen-activated protein kinases. The aim of this work was to explore the roles of intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) in these ouabain-initiated pathways. Ouabain caused a rapid generation of ROS within the myocytes that was prevented by preexposure of cells to N-acetylcysteine (NAC) or vitamin E. These antioxidants also blocked or attenuated the following actions of …