Background: Acute myocardial infarction (MI) causes significant changes in cardiac morphology and function. Galectin-3 is a novel and potentially therapeutically important mediator of cardiac remodelling. Myocardial and serum galectin-3 expression dynamics in response to the early cardiovascular outcomes after acute MI are not fully elucidated.
Methods: We first performed a comprehensive longitudinal microarray analyses in mice after acute MI. We then measured the serum levels of galectin-3 in a translational porcine model of coronary microembolism-induced post-ischaemic cardiac remodelling. We validated our pre-clinical studies in humans by measuring serum galectin-3 levels of 52 patients with acute ST-elevation MI (STEMI) and 11 healthy controls. We analysed galectin-3 data in relation to the development of major adverse cardiovascular outcomes (MACO).
Results: Of the 9,753 genes profiled at infarcted and remote myocardium at eight different time points, dynamic myocardial overexpression of galectin-3 mRNA was detected. In a pig model of diffuse myocardial damage and cardiac remodelling, galectin-3 localised to the areas of tissue damage and myocardial fibrosis, with proportionate increase of their serum galectin-3 expression levels. In humans, increased serum galectin-3 level was associated with in-hospital MACO.
Conclusions: In this translational study, we demonstrated that galectin-3 is dynamically overexpressed in response to acute MI-induced cardiac remodelling. Elevated galectin-3 levels are associated with the development of in-hospital MACO.
Keywords: Fibrosis; Galectin-3; Microarrays; Myocardial infarction; Remodelling.
Copyright © 2016 Australian and New Zealand Society of Cardiac and Thoracic Surgeons (ANZSCTS) and the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand (CSANZ). Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.