Cardiac BNP gene delivery prolongs survival in aged spontaneously hypertensive rats with overt hypertensive heart disease

摘要

BackgroundHypertension is a highly prevalent disease associated with cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Recent studies suggest that patients with hypertension also have a deficiency of certain cardiac peptides. Previously we demonstrated that a single intravenous injection of the myocardium-tropic adeno-associated virus (AAV) 9-based vector encoding for proBNP prevented the development of hypertensive heart disease (HHD) in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs). The current study was designed to determine the duration of cardiac transduction after a single AAV9 injection and to determine whether cardiac BNP overexpression can delay the progression of previously established HHD, and improve survival in aged SHRs with overt HHD.