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Diastolic dysfunction is central to the development of heart failure. To date, there is no effective treatment and only limited understanding of its molecular basis. Recently, we showed that the transmembrane proteoglycan syndecan-4 increases in the left ventricle after pressure overload in mice and man, and that syndecan-4 via calcineurin/nuclear factor of activated T-cells (NFAT) promotes myofibroblast differentiation and collagen production upon mechanical stress. The aim of this study was to investigate whether syndecan-4 affects collagen cross-linking and myocardial stiffening in the pressure-overloaded heart.

Aortic banding (AB) caused concentric hypertrophy and increased passive tension of left ventricular muscle strips, responses that were blunted in syndecan-4^−/− mice. Disruption of titin anchoring by salt extraction of actin and myosin …