Interleukin-1 signaling mediates acute doxorubicin-induced cardiotoxicity

Doxorubicin (DOX) is a potent anticancer drug, which is widely used in the treatments of a variety of solid and hematopoietic tumours, but its use is limited by its cardiotoxicity and dose-dependent congestive heart failure. After we found the high expression of interleukin-1 receptor I (IL-1RI) gene in mice cardiac tissues with DOX-induced cardiotoxicity, we assumed interleukin-1 (IL-1) signaling might mediate acute DOX-induced cardiotoxicity. In this report, Balb/c mice were intraperitoneally injected with different dosage of DOX followed by different days of study. We found both IL-1β and interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1Ra) concentrations in serum were highly induced after DOX treatment, associated with increased IL-1RI expression in cardiac tissues. Furthermore, IL-1 signaling was found to express higher with the increased dosage of DOX treatment. Histology score of cardiac tissues showed obvious cardiac damage after DOX treatment, while assessment with the Spearman rank correlation coefficient showed that histology score was closely correlated with IL-1β and IL-1Ra concentrations in serum and IL-1RI expression in cardiac tissue. Our results reveal a potential role of IL-1 signaling in acute DOX-induced cardiotoxic injury and lead to an assumption that this signal system might be a potential candidate agent that inhibits cardiomyocyte-toxicity in DOX-exposed patients.