"Kissing hormone" against heart attack
Oxytocin was suggested to be used for rehabilitation after a heart attack
Alexandra Medvedeva, Naked Science
The hormone oxytocin is known for its role in creating social connections, the emergence of friendly, maternal and romantic feelings between people. In a woman's body, it also regulates lactation and uterine contraction, in a man's body — ejaculation, sperm transport and testosterone production.
Now researchers from Michigan State University (USA) have discovered another unexpected function of this hormone. It turned out that oxytocin stimulates stem cells that have emerged from the outer layer of the heart (epicardium) to migrate to its middle layer (myocardium) and turn into cardiomyocytes - muscle cells that generate heart contractions in the cultures of fish and human zebrafish cells.
In the future, the results of the study presented in the journal Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology (Wasserman et al., Oxytocin promotes epicardial cell activation and heart regeneration after cardiac injury) can be used to develop rehabilitation strategies after a heart attack.
Myocardial infarction leads to the death of a large number of cardiomyocytes. These highly specialized cells are not able to reproduce themselves. However, previous studies have shown that epicardial cells can become stem cells, which then turn into cardiomyocytes and other cell types.
Danio-rerio are known for their extraordinary ability to regenerate organs, including the brain, retina, bones and skin, as well as the heart. They succeed in the latter not only due to the division of cardiomyocytes, but also due to the cells of the epicardium.
By examining danio fish for three days after cryopreservation of the heart, scientists found that the expression of matrix RNA encoding oxytocin in the brain of fish increases by 20 times. Oxytocin then moves into the epicardium of fish and binds to the receptor, triggering a molecular cascade that causes epicardium cells to turn into stem cells. After that, they migrate to the myocardium to become cardiomyocytes, vascular cells, and so on.
The authors also showed that oxytocin behaves in a similar way in human cell culture. The scientists also tested fourteen other neuropeptides, but only oxytocin stimulated epicardial cells.
This indicates that stimulation of epicardial cells by oxytocin has largely been preserved evolutionarily in humans. Oxytocin is widely used in medicine, so its administration to patients with heart damage is not very difficult.
By itself, oxytocin cannot stay in the bloodstream for a long time, so its action may be difficult. Scientists believe that the development of drugs with a longer half-life will be required. In the near future, the authors plan to switch to preclinical animal trials, and then to clinical trials in humans.
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