Comparison of cardiac Troponin T and cardiac Troponin I concentrations in peripheral blood during orciprenaline induced tachycardia in rats

In this study we addressed the question of whether the measurement of the cardiac structure protein cardiac Toponin T (cTnI) in serum is also able to detect marked myocardial cell damage in rats like cardiac Troponin T (cTnT). To answer this question 5 male rats and 5 female rats were injected with orciprenaline to induce myocardial cell damage. Further 5 animals of each sex received physiological saline as control. We could demonstrate that troponin I was rised significantly 6 hours after injection in serum as well as cTnT. 24 hours after injection cTnI was elevated on a lower significance level compared to cTnT. All values returned to normal 96 hours after the injection. We conclude that cTnI was also able to detect a marked myocardial cell damage in rats but we could show that cTnI was elevated on a lower significance level compared to cTnT. Furthermore we found that a cTnI increase to at least 4.1 ng/ml is necessary to detect marked myocardial cell injury in this rat tachycardia model.