How wonderful would it be if there were a simple, cheap, safe, non-invasive treatment that could be administered to a patient to protect their organs from ischemia and reperfusion? Such a treatment might be used to protect the organs during temporary loss of blood flow, as occurs for example during a heart attack or stroke. As unlikely as this may sound, such a treatment has indeed been discovered, although research into the mechanism is only just beginning. A recent paper by Heusch et al. in Circulation Research has taken the first step in this direction, as explained below.
Keywords: STAT5; ischemia; preconditioning; remote; reperfusion.