Modelagem computacional eletromecânica de cardiomiócitos de ratos hipertensos

Abstract

The hypertension is a chronic disease that is related to an increased in the pressure exerted by the blood on the walls of blood vessels. Its appearance is related to the metabolic syndrome and often with obesity. Between the years 2000 and 2011, this condition was considered the leading cause of death worldwide due to the complications inherent to its dysfunction, such as stroke and myocardial infarction. Several studies have been conducted in order to better understand the mechanisms that are related to the onset of hypertension and the dysfunctions caused by this disease. Among these disorders, there are the physiological changes that occur in the heart with the main changes occuring in electrical and mechanical activity of the heart organ. The Computational modeling can become a very effective tool in aid of such studies. The possibility of simulating the dysfunctions caused by hypertension in the heart would results in a possibility to do previous in silico experiments with low cost and in a short period of time. So this work is primarily engaged to present computational models capable of reproducing the transmural electromechanical activity of myocyte of normotensive and hypertensive rats. For this, a new mathematical / computational model was proposed resulted from a coupling of two others models presented in the literature. The proposed computational model obtained satisfactory results since it was able to reproduce the physiological changes in myocytes of rats, both for epicardial origin of cells and for endocardial cells of origin, the main variables associated with the heartbeat: the action potential, calcium intracellular transient and the shortening of the sarcomere.