Monoamine oxidases (MAOs) are mitochondrial enzymes with 2 isoforms that have emerged as important contributors to cardiovascular oxidative stress via the constant generation of hydrogen peroxide. The present study was purported to assess whether MAO-derived H 2 O 2 contributes to the endothelial dysfunction in mammary arteries harvested from coronary heart disease patients with/without diabetes mellitus subjected to coronary artery bypass grafting.To this aim the effects of MAO inhibition on vascular contractility to phenylephrine and endothelial-dependent relaxation (EDR) in response to acetylcholine were studied in vascular segments. Clorgyline (irreversible MAO A inhibitor), selegiline (irreversible MAO B inhibitor), and moclobemide (reversible MAO A inhibitor) were applied in the organ bath (10µmol/L). MAO expression was assessed by immunohistochemistry. We found a constant impairment of EDR that has been significantly attenuated in the presence of the MAO A and B inhibitors in both groups of coronary heart disease patients. MAO B was the dominant isoform in all human diseased vessels. In conclusion, in vitro inhibition of MAO significantly improved endothelium-dependent relaxation in human mammary arteries, regardless the presence of diabetes. These data suggest that MAO inhibitors might be useful in restoring endothelial response in clinical conditions associated with increased oxidative stress, such as coronary artery disease and diabetes.Key words: monoamine oxidases, coronary artery disease, diabetes mellitus, endothelial dysfunction, MAO inhibitors
IntroductionCoronary heart disease (CHD) is currently the leading cause of morbidity due to heart failure and its evolution is aggravated by the presence of diabetes mellitus (DM) whose prevalence is increasing at an alarming rate worldwide. Nowadays, it is widely accepted that A large body of experimental evidence showed that under physiological conditions the amount of H 2 O 2 generated via MAO is reduced but in cardiac pathologies (such as myocardial ischemia/reperfusion and heart failure) the increased activity of the MAO-A isoform becomed deleterious (Bianchi et al. 2005a; Kaludercic et al. 2011; Kaludercic et al. 2010).Accordingly, in the rodent heart, MAO-A activation contributes to the ischemia/reperfusion injury in the in vivo model of regional ischemia (Bianchi et al. 2005a,b; Carpi et al. 2009) and to the maladaptive ventricular remodeling in the transverse aortic constriction-induced model of heart failure, respectively (Kaludercic et al. 2010;Villeneuve et al. 2013).Furthermore, an elegant study has unequivocally proven the role of MAO-B activation in triggering mitochondrial dysfunction besides the cardiac structural and functional alterations in mice with experimentally induced heart failure (Kaludercic et al. 2014). Recently, we described the role of MAOs as mediators of endothelial dysfunction and the beneficial effect of MAO inhibition in murine diseased vessels (Sturza et al. 2013), and in experimental diabetes mellitus, respec...