Figure 7. Preoperative treatment with iNOS inhibitors protects against disruption in pacemaker activity after surgery.
A, reduced slow-wave amplitude only in cells immediately adjacent to (i.e. 0.5 cm) the site of anastomosis following presurgical administration of aminoguanidine (AG; 20 mg kg−1) or N-(3-(aminomethyl) benzyl)acetamidine (1400W; 2 mg kg−1; B). Sites above 0.5 cm displayed slow-wave activity of that was not significantly different from normal. These results are similar to data obtained from animals with genetically disrupted iNOS (see Fig. 3). C, slow-wave amplitude as a function of distance from the site of anastomosis in untreated wild-type animals (•), and animals treated preoperatively with AG (^) or 1400 W (▾). *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01 as compared with sham-operated mice by t test (dashed line). These values were not significantly different from each other within the group between the distance of 1–5 cm (AG, P > 0.05; and 1400W, P > 0.05; by ANOVA).