Apoptosis status from rat heart submitted to foot shock stress

Background and aim: The goal of this study was to investigate whether physical stress is able to modulate apoptotic response in rat myocardial tissue. The effects of foot shock stress on the histopatological changes and immunohistochemistry for p53, bcl-2 and bax were evaluated. Methods: Male Wistar rats (n= 10) were distributed into two groups: group 1, control and group 2, stress. The stress protocol consisted of one daily foot-shock session applied on three consecutive days. Results: The results pointed out no remarkable changes of myocardial tissue between groups. Also, the foot shock stress was not able to modulate p53, bcl-2 or bax expression, as depicted by no significant statistically differences (P > 0.05) between groups for all immunomarkers evaluated. Conclusions: Taken together, our results suggest that foot shock stress did not induce histopathological changes in rat myocardial tissue. It seems that physical stress is not able to modulate apoptotic response in rats. Certainly, this finding offers new insights into the mechanisms underlying the relation between apoptosis and cardiac injury after stress.