[Histonet] Evans blue dye and myocardial infarction

[Matthews, Ken]

I hope that someone out there may be able to shed light on our problem.
We are studying means to reduce the tissue damage caused by heart
attacks.  Our studies suggest that, following the induction of a heart
attack in our sheep model, some of the surviving tissue is compromised.
We are attempting to delineate the areas of compromised tissue by
post-mortem infusion of 0.15% Evans blue dye in 0.9% saline (we have
also tried phosphate-buffered saline).  The dye is infused into the
coronary arteries immediately after death, followed by flushing with
0.9% saline. Our understanding of Evans blue is that it cannot cross
intact cell membranes and therefore will only enter compromised muscle
fibres (it has been used in this way to mark dystrophic muscle fibres in
the mdx mouse). Can anybody tell me why the whole heart is staining blue
during infusion, and remaining so following flushing.  This happens even
in control hearts which have not suffered a heart attack, and therefore
have only normal muscle.
I would be very grateful if anybody could come up with some suggestions.
Thank you.

Ken Matthews PhD
Scientist
Functional Muscle Genomics Group
AgResearch Ruakura 
Private Bag 3123
East Street
Hamilton
New Zealand

Tel. 64-7-838-5753
Fax. 64-7-838-5536


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