Different factors may trigger arrhythmias in diseased hearts, including fibrosis, cardiomyocyte hypertrophy, hypoxia, and inflammation. This makes it difficult to establish the relative contribution of each of them to the occurrence of arrhythmias. Accordingly, in this study, we used an in vitro model of pathological cardiac hypertrophy (PCH) to investigate its proarrhythmic features and the underlying mechanisms independent of fibrosis or other PCH-related processes. Neonatal rat ventricular cardiomyocyte (nr-vCMC) monolayers were treated with phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA) to create an in vitro model of PCH. The electrophysiological properties of PMA-treated and control monolayers were analyzed by optical mapping at day 9 of culture. PMA treatment led to a significant increase in cell size and total protein content. It also caused a reduction in sarcoplasmic/endoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ ATPase 2 level (32%) and an increase in natriuretic peptide A (42%) and α1-skeletal muscle actin (34%) levels, indicating that the hypertrophic response induced by PMA was, indeed, pathological in nature. PMA-treated monolayers showed increases in action potential duration (APD) and APD dispersion, and a decrease in conduction velocity (CV; APD30 of 306 ± 39 vs. 148 ± 18 ms, APD30 dispersion of 85 ± 19 vs. 22 ± 7 and CV of 10 ± 4 vs. 21 ± 2 cm/s in controls). Upon local 1-Hz stimulation, 53.6% of the PMA-treated cultures showed focal tachyarrhythmias based on triggered activity (n = 82), while the control group showed 4.3% tachyarrhythmias (n = 70). PMA-treated nr-vCMC cultures may, thus, represent a well-controllable in vitro model for testing new therapeutic interventions targeting specific aspects of hypertrophy-associated arrhythmias

Keywords