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Doxorubicin (DOX) is an anthracycline antibiotic with a potent anticancer activity used against human neoplasms. Doxorubicin causes numerous adverse effects i.e., toxic effect on the cardiovascular system of experimental animals and humans. DOX may provoke a few types of cardiomyopathies: an acute, subacute, chronic and late-onset one. Changes in ECG can be observed at any stage of cardiovascular abnormalities. Abnormal ECG findings may initially be transient in character, whereas continued use of anthracyclines may lead to their fixation. ECG has been suggested as one of the methods allowing to detect cardiotoxicity of anthracycline antibiotics. The usefulness of ECG in assessment of anthracycline cardiotoxicity in experimental animals has been indicated by various authors. In our experiments, we wanted to find out whether carnosine (CAR)--a naturally occurring antioxidant, a dipeptide commonly occurring in the human organism, can influence the potential changes in standard ECG of DOX-treated rabbits, which could indicate its cardioprotective effect. |
