You will be shown an abstract from a biomedical research paper. Given this abstract, your task is to extract all unique entities of the following types: ["Variant", "Disease", "Species", "CellLine", "Chemical", "Gene"].

Please return the output as a JSON object of the format: {"CellLine": ["hRPTEC", ...], "Chemical": ["Glucose", ...], "Disease": ["Diabetes", ...], "Gene": ["HNF-6", ...], "Species": ["Patients", ...], "Variant": ["Pro75Ala", ...]}. The keys should be entity types and values should be lists of extracted entities belonging to the corresponding type. If you cannot find entities belonging to a specific type, the value should be [].

Only output the JSON object and do not include any additional text.

Abstract:

Regulation of signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 and apoptotic pathways by betaine attenuates isoproterenol-induced acute myocardial injury in rats. The present study was designed to investigate the cardioprotective effects of betaine on acute myocardial ischemia induced experimentally in rats focusing on regulation of signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) and apoptotic pathways as the potential mechanism underlying the drug effect. Male Sprague Dawley rats were treated with betaine (100, 200, and 400 mg/kg) orally for 40 days. Acute myocardial ischemic injury was induced in rats by subcutaneous injection of isoproterenol (85 mg/kg), for two consecutive days. Serum cardiac marker enzyme, histopathological variables and expression of protein levels were analyzed. Oral administration of betaine (200 and 400 mg/kg) significantly reduced the level of cardiac marker enzyme in the serum and prevented left ventricular remodeling. Western blot analysis showed that isoproterenol-induced phosphorylation of STAT3 was maintained or further enhanced by betaine treatment in myocardium. Furthermore, betaine (200 and 400 mg/kg) treatment increased the ventricular expression of Bcl-2 and reduced the level of Bax, therefore causing a significant increase in the ratio of Bcl-2/Bax. The protective role of betaine on myocardial damage was further confirmed by histopathological examination. In summary, our results showed that betaine pretreatment attenuated isoproterenol-induced acute myocardial ischemia via the regulation of STAT3 and apoptotic pathways.
{"CellLine": [], "Chemical": ["isoproterenol", "betaine"], "Disease": ["myocardial injury", "myocardial ischemia", "myocardial ischemic injury", "ventricular remodeling", "myocardial damage"], "Gene": ["Bcl-2", "STAT3", "signal transducer and activator of transcription 3", "Bax"], "Species": ["rats"], "Variant": []}