Cardiac autonomic denervation and functional response to neurotoxins during acute experimental Chagas' disease in rats

The prevalence and significance of periodic leg movements during sleep in patients with congestive heart failure

“…CHF subjects have an elevated sympathetic tone during wakefulness and sleep [26][27][28], and it is possible that the threshold for eliciting a cardiac acceleration in CHF is elevated. A significant proportion of patients in our study were diagnosed with Chagas' disease; these patients have been demonstrated to have an abnormal sympathetic and parasympathetic cardiac response [29][30][31][32][33]. Impaired cardiac response to PLMs has also been described in subjects with REM sleep behavior disorder in whom impaired autonomic reactivity to stimuli has been suggested [11].…”

Clueless with fewer cues from endothelin. Commentary: Venous endothelin guides sympathetic innervation of the developing mouse heart

“…Beside the implication of the mechanism presented in the commented article (i.e., endothelin-dependent cardiac innervation and adaptation to stress) in the context of evolution, as proposed by the authors, putative therapeutic strategies arising from these results and earlier studies are worth discussing here (Figure 1 ). Denervation can affect parasympathetic ganglia, as in the Chagas' disease (see Teixeira et al, 2001 ), but also cardiac sympathetic nerves, as in the early onset of Parkinson's disease (Orimo et al, 2007 ). Whilst cardiovascular pathologies involving sympathetic plasticity are mostly characterized by hyperinnervation, which may lead to the generation of arrhythmia, sympathetic denervation also occurs in myocardial infarction and heart failure (Hasan, 2013 ).…”