Expression profiling of rat heart and blood after amiodarone treatment

In the present study, an oligonucleotide microarray platform was used to compare expression profiles of heart and blood in rats treated with amiodarone against respective controls. Male Sprague-Dawley (CD) rats, which were 10 weeks old and weighed 290-320 grams at the beginning of the study, have been treated for ten days with amiodarone by oral route at a dose of 300mg/Kg/die. The study has been constituted by a control group, which received the vehicle (methylcellulose 1%, w/v), and by a treatment group (10 animals for both groups). For each tissue sample, total RNA has been individually extracted and evaluated. For each tissue, three pools/group (2 pools composed of 3 animals and the last one by 4) have been used for microarray analysis. A modulation of 600 genes in heart and 8300 genes in blood has been obtained.