An Association Between Gene Expression and Better Survival in Female Mice Following Myocardial Infarction. Mus musculus

Following myocardial infarction, the prognosis for females is better than males. Estrogen is thought to be protective, but clinical trials with hormone replacement failed to show protection. Here, we sought to identify novel mechanisms that might explain this sex-based difference. By diverging from the traditional focus on sex hormones, we employed a conceptually novel approach to this question by using a non-biased approach to measure global changes in gene expression following infarction. Overall design: Three days after coronary artery ligation surgery, RNA was extracted from left ventricular samples (infarct excluded) using the QIAGEN RNeasy Fibrous Tissue Mini Kit. Four groups were compared with a 2x2 design: male and female, sham and coronary artery ligation, with five mice per group.