Universal scaling law of electrical turbulence in the mammalian heart

doi:10.1073/pnas.0709758104

Universal scaling law of electrical turbulence in the mammalian heart

^†Department of Pharmacology and Institute for Cardiovascular Research, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, NY 13210;
^‡Division of Cardiology, Toronto General Hospital, Toronto, ON, Canada M5G 2C4;
^§Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañon, 28007 Madrid, Spain; and
^¶Cardiovascular Institute, Hospital Clinico San Carlos, 28040 Madrid, Spain

Communicated by Charles S. Peskin, New York University, New York, NY, October 13, 2007 (received for review April 18, 2007)

Abstract

Many biological processes, such as metabolic rate and life span, scale with body mass (BM) according to the universal law of allometric scaling: Y = aBM^b (Y, biological process; b, scaling exponent). We investigated whether the temporal properties of ventricular fibrillation (VF), the major cause of sudden and unexpected cardiac death, scale with BM. By using high-resolution optical mapping, numerical simulations and metaanalysis of VF data in 11 mammalian species, we demonstrate that the interbeat interval of VF scales as VF_cycle _length = 53 × BM^1/4, spanning more than four orders of magnitude in BM from mouse to horse.

Footnotes

^‖To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jalifej{at}upstate.edu
Author contributions: S.F.N. and O.B. contributed equally to this work; S.F.N., O.B., and J.J. designed research; S.F.N., O.B., J.K., M.C., K.N., F.A., and J.M. performed research; S.F.N., O.B., S.M., and J.J. analyzed data; and S.F.N., O.B., and J.J. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0709758104/DC1.