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Background  Cardiovascular disease increases with age in both sexes. Treatment can require cardiac surgery, where the hearts are pre-treated with protective cardioplegic solution before ischemia and reperfusion (I/R). While endogenous estrogen is beneficial in I/R, whether testosterone is involved is uncertain and whether age modifies responses to I/R is unclear. We investigated sex- and age-specific differences in I/R injury in the hearts pre-treated with clinically relevant cardioplegic solution.    Methods  The hearts were isolated from young (6–9 months) and old (20–28 months) mice of both sexes and perfused (Langendorff) with Krebs-Henseleit buffer (15 min, 37 °C), followed by St. Thomas’ two cardioplegia (6 min, 6–7 °C), global ischemia (90 min, 23–24 °C), and reperfusion (30 min, 37 °C). The hearts were perfused with triphenyltetrazolium chloride to quantify infarct area. Testosterone’s role was investigated in gonadectomized (GDX, 6–9 months) male mice; serum testosterone and estradiol were measured with ELISA assays.    Results  Left ventricular developed pressure (LVDP) recovered to 67.3 ± 7.4% in the old compared to 21.8 ± 9.2% in the young male hearts ( p  < 0.05). Similar results were seen for rates of pressure development (+dP/dt) and decay (−dP/dt). Infarct areas were smaller in the old male hearts (16.6 ± 1.6%) than in the younger hearts (55.8 ± 1.2%,  p  < 0.05). By contrast, the hearts from young and old females exhibited a similar post-ischemic functional recovery and no age-dependent difference in infarcts. There was a sex difference in the young group, where ventricular function (LVDP, +dP/dt, −dP/dt) recovered better and infarcts were smaller in females than males. Estradiol levels were highest in young females. Testosterone was high in young males but low in females and old males, which suggested beneficial effects of low testosterone. Indeed, the hearts from GDX males exhibited much better recovery of LVDP in reperfusion than that from intact males (values were 64.4 ± 7.5 % vs. 21.8 ± 9.2%;  p  < 0.05). The GDX hearts also had smaller infarcts than the hearts from intact males ( p  < 0.05).    Conclusions  Although age had no effect on susceptibility to I/R injury after cardioplegic arrest in females, it actually protected against injury in older males. Our findings indicate that low testosterone may be protective against I/R injury following cardioplegic arrest in older males.    Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (10.1186/s13293-019-0256-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Ischemia and reperfusion injury following cardioplegic arrest is attenuated by age and testosterone deficiency in male but not female mice