Quantification of Diastolic Viscoelastic Properties of Isolated Cardiac Muscle Cells

Pathological processes which cause diastolic congestive heart failure (CHF), such as pressure overload hypertrophy (POH), produce abnormalities in the material properties of cardiac muscle cells (cardiomyocytes) and may selectively alter its elastic stiffness, viscosity, or both. Previous methods used to characterize these cardiomyocyte viscoelastic properties were constrained by specific biological and engineering limitations, which prevented testing in conditions that mimic normal physiology. The current study proposes an uniaxial variable-rate stretching method, in which isolated cardiomyocytes embedded in a three-dimensional gel matrix were subjected to stretch. Physiological Ca++ (2.5 mM) and rapid stretch rates up to 100 μm/sec provided experimental conditions parallel to in vivo physiology. The proposed method identified and individually quantified both cellular stiffness and viscosity, and showed that POH increased both elastic and viscous cardiomyocyte diastolic properties.