Fig. 4.

Pretreatment with aspirin or ticagrelor does not impact on the cardioprotective transfer of remote ischemic conditioning (RIC) via plasma-dialysate. Plasma-dialysates were prepared before and after RIC from the same volunteers (n = 18): without pretreatment (n = 18), with aspirin pretreatment (n = 18), and with ticagrelor pretreatment (n = 18), respectively. Plasma-dialysates before and after RIC were infused into isolated perfused rat hearts, respectively, which were then subjected to 30-min global ischemia/120 min reperfusion. In the aspirin pretreatment group, gray symbols indicate volunteers who were pretreated with 500 mg aspirin (n = 12) and black symbols (n = 6) those with 1000 mg aspirin.*p < 0.001 vs. before RIC without pretreatment; †p = 0.030 vs. before RIC with aspirin pretreatment; **p = 0.044 vs. before RIC with ticagrelor pretreatment and p = 0.041 vs. after RIC with aspirin pretreatment; ‡p = 0.010 vs. before RIC without pretreatment and p = 0.029 vs. before RIC with aspirin pretreatment; two-way repeated measures ANOVA with Fisher least significant differences post hoc tests