Dr.-Ing. Gunnar Seemann

Paola Carrillo

The block of I_Kur is a promising approach in the pharmacotherapy of atrial fibrillation (AF). Numerous pharmaceutical companies investigate specific I_Kur-inhibitors. Advantage of a selective I_Kur-inhibition is an atrial action potential duration prolongation without ventricular side effects. The clinical and experimental data published so far are however unconvincing. Possible reason for the missing effectiveness on the one hand could be remodeling processes of the atrial myocardium (I_Kur-reduction); on the other hand pharmacological characteristics (kinetics of the pharmacological block) could also play an important role. Tsujimae et al. showed differential effects of a simulated I_Kur-block with different pharmacological characteristics on action potential duration in an „in-silico“ model of atrial cardiomyoctes. Further-more, differences of the simulated inhibitors in healthy cells and cells effected by AF typical remodeling was demonstrated.
In this computer-based study, the hypothesis should be examined that the pharmacological characteristics of I_Kur-inhibitors play an important role for the therapeutic success for the ter-mination of re-entry excitations in the human atrium under chronically AF.