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Cinnamaldehyde inhibits L-type calcium channels in mouse ventricular cardiomyocytes and vascular smooth muscle cells

  • Ion channels, receptors and transporters
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Pflügers Archiv - European Journal of Physiology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Cinnamaldehyde (CA), a major component of cinnamon, is known to have important actions in the cardiovascular system, including vasorelaxation and decrease in blood pressure. Although CA-induced activation of the chemosensory cation channel TRPA1 seems to be involved in these phenomena, it has been shown that genetic ablation of Trpa1 is insufficient to abolish CA effects. Here, we confirm that CA relaxes rat aortic rings and report that it has negative inotropic and chronotropic effects on isolated mouse hearts. Considering the major role of L-type Ca2+ channels in the control of the vascular tone and cardiac contraction, we used whole-cell patch-clamp to test whether CA affects L-type Ca2+ currents in mouse ventricular cardiomyocytes (VCM, with Ca2+ as charge carrier) and in mesenteric artery smooth muscle cells (VSMC, with Ba2+ as charge carrier). We found that CA inhibited L-type currents in both cell types in a concentration-dependent manner, with little voltage-dependent effects. However, CA was more potent in VCM than in VSMC and caused opposite effects on the rate of inactivation. We found these divergences to be at least in part due to the use of different charge carriers. We conclude that CA inhibits L-type Ca2+ channels and that this effect may contribute to its vasorelaxing action. Importantly, our results demonstrate that TRPA1 is not a specific target of CA and indicate that the inhibition of voltage-gated Ca2+ channels should be taken into account when using CA to probe the pathophysiological roles of TRPA1.

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Acknowledgments

Research was supported by Spanish public funds from Instituto de Salud Carlos III ISCIII-FEDER RD12/0042/0006 (Heracles Program), Spanish MINECO grant BFU2010-15898 (MTPG) and Junta de Castilla y León grant VA094A11-2 (JRLL), and grants from the Belgian Federal Government (IUAP P7/13), the Research Foundation-Flanders (Grant G.0765.13), and the Research Council of the KU Leuven (Grants GOA 2009/07 and PF-TRPLe).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratorio de Electrofisiología, Instituto de Cardiología y Cirugía Cardiovascular, Habana, Cuba

    Julio Alvarez-Collazo, Ana I. López-Medina & Julio L. Alvarez

  2. Departamento de Bioquímica y Biología Molecular y Fisiología e Instituto de Biología y Genética Molecular (IBGM), Universidad de Valladolid y CSIC, Valladolid, Spain

    Lucía Alonso-Carbajo, Sendoa Tajada, José Ramón López-López & María Teresa Pérez-García

  3. Laboratory for Ion Channel Research and TRP Research Platform Leuven (TRPLe), Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, KU Leuven, Campus Gasthuisberg, O&N1, bus 802. Herestraat 49, 3000, Leuven, Belgium

    Lucía Alonso-Carbajo, Yeranddy A. Alpizar, Bernd Nilius, Thomas Voets & Karel Talavera

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  1. Julio Alvarez-Collazo
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  2. Lucía Alonso-Carbajo
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  3. Ana I. López-Medina
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  4. Yeranddy A. Alpizar
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  6. Bernd Nilius
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  7. Thomas Voets
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  8. José Ramón López-López
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  9. Karel Talavera
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  10. María Teresa Pérez-García
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  11. Julio L. Alvarez
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Karel Talavera.

Additional information

Julio Alvarez-Collazo and Lucía Alonso-Carbajo shared first authorship.

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Alvarez-Collazo, J., Alonso-Carbajo, L., López-Medina, A.I. et al. Cinnamaldehyde inhibits L-type calcium channels in mouse ventricular cardiomyocytes and vascular smooth muscle cells. Pflugers Arch - Eur J Physiol 466, 2089–2099 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00424-014-1472-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00424-014-1472-8

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