Acute reperfusion intramyocardial hemorrhage leads to regional chronic iron deposition in the heart

Intramyocardial hemorrhage commonly occurs in large reperfused myocardial infarctions. However, its long-term fate remains unexplored. We hypothesized that acute reperfusion intramyocardial hemorrhage leads to chronic iron deposition

Mycobacterium tuberculosis EsxL inhibits MHC-II expression by promoting hypermethylation in class-II transactivator loci in macrophages

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) is known to modulate the host immune responses to facilitate its persistence inside the host cells. One of the key mechanisms includes repression of class-II transactivator (CIITA) and MHC-II expression in infected macrophages. However, the precise mechanism of CIITA and MHC-II down-regulation is not well studied. Mtb 6-kDa early secretory antigenic target (ESAT-6) is a known potent virulence and antigenic determinant. Mtb genome encodes 23 such ESAT-6 family proteins. We herein report that Mtb and M. bovis-BCG infection down-regulated the expression of CIITA/MHC-II by inducing hypermethylation in histone H3 Lysine 9 (H3K9me2/3). Further, we show that Mtb ESAT-6 family protein EsxL, encoded by Rv1198, is responsible for the down-regulation of CIITA/MHC-II by inducing H3K9me2/3. We further report that Mtb esxL induced the expression of nitric oxide synthetase (iNOS), NO production and p38-MAPK pathway, which in turn was responsible for the increased H3K9me2/3 in CIITA via up-regulation of euchromatic histone-lysine N-methyltransferase 2 (G9a). In contrast, inhibition of iNOS, p38-MAPK and G9a abrogated H3K9me2/3 resulting in increased CIITA expression. Chromatin immune precipitation assay confirmed that hypermethylation at the promoter IV (pIV) region of CIITA is mainly responsible for the CIITA down regulation and subsequently antigen presentation. We found that co-culture of macrophages infected with esxL expressing M. smegmatis and mouse spleenocytes led to down-regulation of IL-2, a key cytokine involved in T-cell proliferation. In summary, we show that Mtb esxL inhibits antigen presentation by enhancing H3K9me2/3 on CIITA promoter thereby repressing its expression through NO and p38-MAPK activation

Iron Deposition following Chronic Myocardial Infarction as a Substrate for Cardiac Electrical Anomalies: Initial Findings in a Canine Model

Purpose: Iron deposition has been shown to occur following myocardial infarction (MI). We investigated whether such focal iron deposition within chronic MI lead to electrical anomalies. Methods: Two groups of dogs (ex-vivo (n = 12) and in-vivo (n = 10)) were studied at 16 weeks post MI. Hearts of animals from ex-vivo group were explanted and sectioned into infarcted and non-infarcted segments. Impedance spectroscopy was used to derive electrical permittivity () and conductivity (). Mass spectrometry was used to classify and characterize tissue sections with (IRON+) and without (IRON-) iron. Animals from in-vivo group underwent cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) for estimation of scar volume (late-gadolinium enhancement, LGE) and iron deposition (T2*) relative to left-ventricular volume. 24-hour electrocardiogram recordings were obtained and used to examine Heart Rate (HR), QT interval (QT), QT corrected for HR (QTc) and QTc dispersion (QTcd). In a fraction of these animals (n = 5), ultra-high resolution electroanatomical mapping (EAM) was performed, co-registered with LGE and T2* CMR and were used to characterize the spatial locations of isolated late potentials (ILPs). Results: Compared to IRON- sections, IRON+ sections had higher, but no difference in. A linear relationship was found between iron content and (p1.5%)) with similar scar volumes (7.28%±1.02% (Iron (1.5%)), p = 0.51) but markedly different iron volumes (1.12%±0.64% (Iron (1.5%)), p = 0.02), QT and QTc were elevated and QTcd was decreased in the group with the higher iron volume during the day, night and 24-hour period (p<0.05). EAMs co-registered with CMR images showed a greater tendency for ILPs to emerge from scar regions with iron versus without iron. Conclusion: The electrical behavior of infarcted hearts with iron appears to be different from those without iron. Iron within infarcted zones may evolve as an arrhythmogenic substrate in the post MI period