Experimental protocols.

(A) Hearts in groups 1–9 were harvested after 120 min (60 min of reperfusion) and stained to allow infarct size determination. Simvastatin (simv) was injected 48h (day-2) and 24h (day-1) before the start of the experiments. (B) Hearts in groups 10–16 were harvested at different time points along the perfusion protocol (*) to allow molecular biological analyses. Ctr = hearts from normoglycemic animals, Diab = hearts from STZ-induced diabetic animals, SHAM = continues perfused normoxia treated hearts, I/R = ischemia/reperfusion, sevo = sefoflurane.