Scientists have discovered that administering supplements of an essential mineral nutrient required for sustaining the health of bodily tissues at the right time enhances recovery after a heart attack or stroke.
If selenide, a form of the essential nutrient selenium, is administered intravenously in the wake of the cardiac attack, damage to heart muscle can be reduced by nearly 90%, the findings showed.
If selenide, a form of the essential nutrient selenium, is administered intravenously in the wake of the cardiac attack, damage to heart muscle can be reduced by nearly 90%, the findings showed.
"We found that administration of selenide after the heart has been deprived of blood flow and before blood flow is restored significantly protects the heart tissue in a mouse model of acute myocardial infarction and reperfusion injury," said Mark Roth, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, US.
Ischemia, or insufficient blood supply, as occurs during a heart attack or stroke, causes tissues to become starved of oxygen. Reperfusion injury is the tissue damage caused when blood supply returns to the tissue after a period of ischemia or lack of oxygen.
The researchers tested whether supplementing the body's naturally-occurring selenide with an infusion of selenide might protect tissues after a heart attack once blood flow is restored.
Using a mouse model of heart attack, Roth and colleagues administered selenide just prior to restoring blood flow and found that it reduced heart damage by 88%.
The findings appeared online in the journal Critical Care Medicine.
Source: IANS
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