Persistent interferon-gamma fuels chronic cardiac remodeling after heart attacks in aged mice
A conserved interferon-gamma signature and heightened T cell recruitment drive worse long-term heart failure outcomes in older mice following myocardial infarction.
Journal of molecular and cellular cardiology · Melika ET et al. · Paper published 28 Sep 2026
Researchers compared post-myocardial infarction inflammatory responses in 2-month-old and 18-month-old C57BL/6 J mice of both sexes. They tracked interferon-gamma-producing cells using Ifng-YFP reporter mice and identified an interferon-gamma production signature that is conserved across mouse and human physiological aging. Following myocardial infarction, the aged mouse heart displayed an increased pro-inflammatory gene expression signature along with enhanced recruitment of interferon-gamma-expressing T cells. While this age-associated inflammation showed minimal impact during acute post-infarction responses, a persistent interferon-gamma signature in elderly mice was associated with aggravated chronic adverse cardiac remodeling. The authors conclude that age-related smoldering inflammation may fuel the long-term progression of ischemic heart failure.
Why it matters
The findings clarify how age-related immune alterations impede tissue repair after injury. They suggest that persistent, smoldering inflammation rather than the initial acute response drives post-infarction heart failure in older organisms.
Caveats
The primary mechanistic and post-infarction findings were established in mice, and the abstract does not provide details on sample sizes or the human data used to demonstrate the conserved signature.
Written from the paper’s abstract, and every claim checked against it before publishing. Read the paper for the full methods and data.
The paper
Immune responses following myocardial infarction in aged mice
Melika ET, Ashour D, Appel M et al.
Journal of molecular and cellular cardiology · 28 Sep 2026 · Peer-reviewed
- Relevance
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- Peer-reviewed
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