Abstract:
Objective To explore the role and mechanism of cardiac resident macrophages in heart repair after myocardial infarction in mice.
Methods Macrophage-specific Cre tool mice (CX3CR1CreER–YFP mice) with doubly transgenic mice (R26tdTomato/DTR mice) were hybridized to obtain cardiac resident macrophage-specific red fluorescent labels in mice. Sixty Cx3cr1CreER-YFP:R26Td/DTR hybrid mice were randomly divided into 4 groups: Sham group, DT+Sham group, MI group, and DT+MI group, with 15 mice in each group. MI group and DT+MI group underwent myocardial infarction modeling by ligating the left anterior descending coronary artery. The DT+MI group mice were induced to deplete resident macrophages in the heart tissue using diphtheria toxin (DT) to establish a cardiac resident macrophage knockout model. On the 5th day after myocardial infarction modeling, heart tissue slices of mice were stained with H-E to observe inflammation infiltration and myocardial infarct size were calculated; on the 14th day of modeling, echocardiography was used to measure cardiac function-related parameters in mice, and mRNA expression levels of inflammatory cytokines were detected.
Results Compared with the MI group, the DT+MI group mice showed a significant reduction in cardiac resident macrophages (53.75±4.62 vs 6.37±1.25, P<0.05). On the 14th day after myocardial infarction modeling, compared with the MI group, the DT+MI group mice had significantly increased left ventricular end-diastolic diameter (5.11±0.22 mm vs 5.92±0.26 mm, P<0.05) and left ventricular end-systolic diameter (4.77±0.17 mm vs 5.38±0.16 mm, P<0.05), while the ejection fraction significantly decreased (27.76±1.20% vs 17.61±0.94%, P<0.05); in addition, the DT+MI group mice showed increased expression levels of inflammatory cytokines, increased inflammatory cell infiltration, and significantly larger myocardial infarct size. The protein expression levels of NF-κB/p-P65 in DT+MI group mice were significantly higher than those in the MI group (0.28±0.14 vs 1.09±0.12, P<0.05).
Conclusions Cardiac resident macrophages play an important role in heart tissue repair after myocardial infarction by reducing inflammation cell infiltration and myocardial infarct size.