Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Cardiol. Oct 26, 2016; 8(10): 584-589
Published online Oct 26, 2016. doi: 10.4330/wjc.v8.i10.584
Impaired norepinephrine regulation of monocyte inflammatory cytokine balance in heart failure
Tien MH Ng, Myron L Toews
Tien MH Ng, Myron L Toews, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE 68198, United States
Tien MH Ng, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-9121, United States
Author contributions: Ng TMH was involved in the design, conduct of the study, statistical analysis, and authorship of the manuscript; Toews ML was involved in the design and assays related to the study.
Supported by the American College of Clinical Pharmacy Research Institute.
Institutional review board statement: Study was approved by the University of Nebraska Medical Center Institutional Review Board.
Informed consent statement: The protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the university. All human subjects gave signed informed consent for their participation.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors report no conflicts of interest related to the study.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Tien MH Ng, Pharm.D., FHFSA, FCCP, BCPS AQ Cardiology, Associate Professor of Clinical Pharmacy and Medicine, University of Southern California, 1985 Zonal Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90089-9121, United States. tienng@usc.edu
Telephone: +1-323-4421840 Fax: +1-323-4421681
Received: March 10, 2016
Peer-review started: March 15, 2016
First decision: April 20, 2016
Revised: July 27, 2016
Accepted: August 17, 2016
Article in press: August 18, 2016
Published online: October 26, 2016
Core Tip

Core tip: In evaluating the relationship between sympathetic activation and inflammatory cytokine production in heart failure, we demonstrated that norepinephrine (NE) has reduced ability to suppress the production of the proinflammatory cytokine tumor necrosis factor-alpha, and increase anti-inflammatory interleukin-10, in human isolated monocytes from heart failure compared to healthy subjects. It appears to be mediated through beta-adrenergic, and not alpha-adrenergic, receptors based on monocytic THP-1 cells dose-response experiments. This suggests that the diminished immunomodulatory activity of NE in heart failure is primarily due to altered beta-adrenergic receptor function, and may represent an immunologic mechanism for the positive effects of beta-adrenergic blocking agents.