Changes in electrical activity of heart during ischemic–reperfusion injury modified by the administration of antidepressants

The aim of our work was to investigate the effect of amitriptyline, citalopram and venlafaxine on the heart during ischemic- reperfusion (l-R) injury. Amitriptyline prolonged both QRS complex and QTc interval duration; citalopram and venlafaxine prolonged only QTc interval duration. Amitriptyline worked most proarrhythmogenic, citalopram least; venlafaxine increased the heart rate during ischemia; however, prolonged QTc interval at the beginning of reperfusion was followed by serious dysrhythmias

The incidence of dysrhythmias after administration of the antipsychotic olanzapine

We evaluated the effect of the antipsychotic olanzapine on electrical activity of rat hearts under conditions of ischemic- reperfusion injury. We focused on the prolongation of the corrected QT interval as a risk factor for the incidence of different types of dysrhythmias. Pretreatment with olanzapine showed prolongation of the corrected QT interval as well as increased incidence of dysrhythmias in following order: ventricular premature beats > bigeminies > trigeminies > salvos. We also observed an increase in the frequency of episodes of ventricular tachycardia of about 64% and the average duration of ventricular tachycardia was more than doubled under the conditions of the ischemic-reperfusion injury

Hippocampal electrophysiological responses and changes in oxidative stress marker and serum lipid profile to pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments of high-fat-fructose diet induced metabolic syndrome

The aim of our study was to evaluate the possibility of influencing the risk factors of metabolic syndrome (MetS) and metabolic cognitive syndrome. As a model of MetS, we used high-fat-fructose diet (HFFD) fed hypertriacylglycerolemic (HTG) rats. Control group included HTG rats fed with HFFD during 8 weeks (HFFD8). Furthermore, we tested the effect of pharmacological and non-pharmacological therapies. Non-pharmacological therapy, which we chose, was a change in diet from HFFD (5 weeks) to standard one (3 weeks) and thus caloric restriction (HFFD5+3). The drug we used was rosmarinic acid (RA; 100mg/kg), which we administered to rats after 5 weeks of HFFD once a day for consecutive 3 weeks with current change in diet to standard one (HFFD5+3+RA) or during lasting last 3 weeks of HFFD (HFFD8+RA). After 8 weeks of experiment, lipid peroxidation markers, lipid profile of blood serum, and neuronal transmission and synaptic plasticity (long-term potentiation [LTP]) in hippocampal sections were evaluated in vitro. We observed a significant effect of dietary change in lipid profile (decreased total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol [LDL-cholesterol] and increased high-density lipoprotein cholesterol [HDL-cholesterol]). The combination of pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments caused a decrease in total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol, and lipid peroxidation in blood serum. Change in HFFD to standard diet without treatment resulted in slight improvement in neuronal transmission in the hippocampus and caloric restriction alone also had positive effect on LTP maintenance. Our results suggest that combination of pharmacological and non-pharmacological approaches had better impact on the biochemical parameters of MetS in blood serum, but weak impact on neuronal functions in the hippocampus, where the expected positive effect was achieved only by caloric restriction

Online shopping: Factors that affect consumer purchasing behaviour

The objective of this paper is to determine factors that affect the consumers’ willingness to purchase product from the online store. We evaluated the criteria based on which users make decisions when purchasing online. We conducted principal components analysis to reduce the number of these criteria and created seven factors. To confirm factors are accurate, we executed confirmatory factor analysis that proved that model consisting of the newly created factors fits the data well