Ischemic preconditioning modulates the DNA methylation process of the rat heart to provide tolerance to withstand ischemia reperfusion injury and its associated mitochondrial dysfunction

DNA methylation plays a crucial role in the pathogenesis of myocardial ischemia reperfusion injury(I/R) and the I/R injury can be combated effectively by ischemia preconditioning (IPC), but the role is DNA methylation in this process is unknown. In this study, we uncovered the role of ischemic preconditioning (IPC)- mediated cardioprotection of rat myocardium by using a Langendorff rat heart model with 30 min of ischemia followed by 60 min of reperfusion. Heart conditioned with short cycles of ischemia and reperfusion (IPC procedure) prior to I/R protocol significantly reduced the I/R-induced global DNA hypermethylation level by 32