Zimik, S and Pandit, R and Majumder, R (2020) Anisotropic shortening in the wavelength of electrical waves promotes onset of electrical turbulence in cardiac tissue: An in silico study. In: PLoS ONE, 15 (3). pp. 1-14.
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Abstract
Several pathological conditions introduce spatial variations in the electrical properties of cardiac tissue. These variations occur as localized or distributed gradients in ion-channel functionality over extended tissue media. Electrical waves, propagating through such affected tissue, demonstrate distortions, depending on the nature of the ionic gradient in the diseased substrate. If the degree of distortion is large, reentrant activity may develop, in the form of rotating spiral (2d) and scroll (3d) waves of electrical activity. These reentrant waves are associated with the occurrence of lethal cardiac rhythm disorders, known as arrhythmias, such as ventricular tachycardia (VT) and ventricular fibrillation (VF), which are believed to be common precursors of sudden cardiac arrest. By using state-of-the-art mathematical models for generic, and ionically-realistic (human) cardiac tissue, we study the detrimental effects of these ionic gradients on electrical wave propagation. We propose a possible mechanism for the development of instabilities in reentrant wave patterns, in the presence of ionic gradients in cardiac tissue, which may explain how one type of arrhythmia (VT) can degenerate into another (VF). Our proposed mechanism entails anisotropic reduction in the wavelength of the excitation waves because of anisotropic variation in its electrical properties, in particular the action potential duration (APD). We find that the variation in the APD, which we induce by varying ion-channel conductances, imposes a spatial variation in the spiral- or scroll-wave frequency �. Such gradients in � induce anisotropic shortening of wavelength of the spiral or scroll arms and eventually leads to instabilitites. © 2020 Zimik et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
| Item Type: | Journal Article |
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| Publication: | PLoS ONE |
| Publisher: | Public Library of Science |
| Additional Information: | Copyright for this article belongs to Authors |
| Keywords: | action potential; anisotropy; Article; computer model; conductance; controlled study; heart electrophysiology; heart excitation; heart rate turbulence; heart ventricle fibrillation; heart ventricle tachycardia; mathematical model; precipitation; simulation; sudden cardiac death |
| Department/Centre: | Division of Physical & Mathematical Sciences > Physics |
| Date Deposited: | 02 Nov 2021 11:15 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Nov 2021 11:15 |
| URI: | http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/64995 |
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