Introduction: Hypokalemia is the most common electrolyte abnormality encountered in clinical practice and enhances the propensity for ventricular fibrillation. An automatic methodology for modeling rats action potential was developed in this work.
Materials and Methods: Isolated rat hearts underwent low K+ perfusion (1 mEq/L) in 4 groups: 1) Mel, 100\,\mathrm{\mu M} melatonin; 2) Luz, luzindole 5\,\mathrm{\mu M} a melatonin receptor blocker; 3) Mel+Luz melatonin+luzindole; or 4) Control. The ECG and epicardial action potential (AP) were recorded and automatically analyzed with an ad-hoc algorithm also presented in this conference. The AP was modeled by morphological and temporal features. The activation delay between the start of the QRS complex and the AP was also calculated.
Results: The heart rhythm, PR and QT interval are presented for the analyzed groups. Further measurements and statistical differences are presented in the formated abstract.
Discussion: Hypokalemia contributes to reducing survival of cardiac patients and increases the incidence of arrhythmic death. Melatonin protects against several cardiovascular diseases and exhibits antiarrhythmic potential. This effect was related to up-regulation of myocardial connexin-43, the main protein responsible for electrical coupling. The automatic methodology presented in this work may allow further research in these mechanisms by increasing the size of the experimentation groups, or the signals involved in the experimentation.