Interleukin-13 and cardiovascular diseases: literature review

Cardiovascular diseases remain the leading cause of death worldwide despite significant advances in medicine and increased life expectancy. It is very important to search for and study new cardiovascular biological markers that can help the early diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases, serve as a laboratory tool for assessing the effectiveness of treatment, be a predictive marker of possible adverse clinical outcomes, and be a significant criterion for risk stratification. This review aims to consider interleukin-13 (IL-13) as a diagnostic and prognostic biomarker in cardiovascular pathology. IL-13 is involved in the development of many cardiovascular diseases, according to various in vitro and in vivo studies, but its role remains unclear until the end. IL-13 has a positive effect, promoting the development of the heart at an early stage and facilitating the recovery of the heart after a myocardial infarction. Due to the induction of fibrosis and adverse cardiac remodeling, long-term IL-13 synthesis appears to be a risk factor for adverse outcomes in chronic cardiovascular diseases, such as heart failure. Understanding the effect of IL-13 on cardiac metabolism will shed light on possible new pathogenetic mechanisms for the development of heart disease. As a rule, an increase in the level of IL-13 in the blood serum goes in parallel with its expression in the tissues of the heart. However, the dissociation of systemic inflammatory reactions and local expression is not excluded. The introduction of IL-13 can restore the regenerative capacity of cardiomyocytes and reduce cardiac dysfunction. IL-13 deficiency limits the proliferation of cardiomyocytes, induces compensatory hypertrophy of cardiomyocytes in vitro and deletion of IL-13, leads to cardiac dysplasia, and impairs recovery processes in vivo. Although IL-13 is associated with cardiac fibrosis, cardiomyocyte proliferation, myocardial hypertrophy, immune cell recruitment and differentiation, and chemokine secretion in the heart, it is precise signaling pathways and underlying mechanisms of action remain poorly understood.