NPPB and cardiac hypertrophy: To simulate the in vivo experiment of metabolic disturbance, H9c2 cardiomyocytes were cultured under metabolic stress by administration of high glucose, palmitic acid and C16-cemamide.Consistent with in vivo observation, ASMase was activated by co-incubation of the high glucose and PA as expected, cardiac hypertrophy has also been observed as shown by increased cardiomyocytes sizes and transcriptional levels of Nppb and Myh 7 genes, which were considered as pro-hypertrophic markers.