Cardiac tyhrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH) is overexpressed in the hypertrophied left ventricle (LV) of spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and its inhibition prevents both hypertrophy and fibrosis. In a normal heart, the TRH increase induces fibrosis and hypertrophy opening the question of whether TRH could be a common mediator of left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH). We used angiotensin II (AngII) as an inductor of LVH to evaluate if the blockade of LV-TRH prevents hypertrophy and fibrosis in mice. We challenged C57BL/6 adult male mice with an infusion of AngII (osmotic pumps; 2 mg/kg.day) to induce LVH. Groups of mice were injected with an intracardiac siRNA-TRH or scrambled siRNA (siRNA-Con). Body weight, water intake and systolic arterial blood pressure (SABP) were measured daily. AngII significantly increased water intake and SABP (p < .05). Cardiac hypertrophy (heart weight/body weight) was evident in the group with the normal cardiac TRH system. In fact, it was found an AngII-induced increase of TRH precursor mRNA (p < .05) in conjunction with elevated TRH levels measured by immunohistochemistry and western blot. These changes were not observed in the AngII + siRNA-TRH group. Furthermore, AngII increased significantly (p < .05) BNP (hypertrophic marker), collagens I and III and TGF-β (fibrosis markers) expression in the group with the native cardiac TRH system. These increases were attenuated in the groups with the TRH system blocked despite the high blood pressure. Similar and stronger results were observed “in vitro” with NIH3T3 and H9C2 cell culture models, where, when the TRH system is blocked, AngII stimulus was not able to induce the markers of its fibrotic and hypertrophic effects, so we believe that these effects are independent of any other physiological modifications.

Our results point out that cardiac TRH is required for AngII-induced hypertrophic and fibrotic effects.