*2.6. Zymography*

LV myocardial MMP activity was measured as described elsewhere [19]. Briefly, extracellular proteins of frozen tissue were extracted by the addition of extraction buffer and then directly used for electrophoresis. The gels were run at 200 V at 4 ◦C. Following electrophoresis, the gels were stained in Coomassie Blue G-250 and scanned using the EagleEye II imaging system (Stratagene, Heidelberg, Germany) for relative lytic activity after normalization to the amount of protein extract loaded onto the gel. The protein activity was related to the median of the CTRL animals (CTRL = 1.0). For more details see [20].
