Recovery of monkeys after myocardial infarction with ventricular fibrillation. Effects of PGB.

PGBx, a polymeric, stable, free radical derivative of 15-keto-prostaglandin B1, that conserves oxidative phosphorylation in mitochondria under degenerative conditions in vitro, affected survival of male Rhesus monkeys (5-9 kg) anesthetized with pentobarbital and subjected to coronary ligation and induced ventricular fibrillation (VF). In tests performed in sequence with intervening periods for recover, intracardiac injections of norepinephrine (NE), cardiac massage (CM), and electrical defibrillation (EDF) were used to restore cardiac function both in controls and experimental animals, but the latter were injected also with 1 mg/kg PGBx. Recovery was established by maintenance of effective blood pressure without exogenous support. In the control group the cumulative survival for fibrillation episodes of 4, 6, 8, and 12 min was 60, 40, 31, and 25% respectively. In the PGBx-treated group survival for equivalent periods was 100, 93, 93, and 88% respectively. In separate studies, African Green monkeys were subjected to single episodes of VF of either 8 or 12 min. Combined survival was 36% for the controls, 93% for the PGBx-treated animals. Clearly PGBx radically improved cardiac recovery after circulatory arrest due to VF in the presence of acute myocardial infarction. The results also suggest a synergistic action between norepinephrine and PGBx in achieving such recovery.