B cells dominate the heart immune infiltrate during chronic infectious cardiomyopathy

Class-switched, antibody-secreting plasma B cells are the predominant immune subset infiltrating the fibrotic myocardium in Trypanosoma cruzi-infected mouse models with chronic pathology.

• Why it matters: Long-term immune–stromal networks that sustain chronic heart disease are poorly defined because physiologically relevant models and spatially resolved analyses are limited.
• What they did: The authors performed side-by-side multi-omic comparisons across Trypanosoma cruzi-infected mouse models with contrasting chronic myocardial pathology and fibrosis, then used CellChat to model immune–fibroblast communication and validated with immunofluorescence and spatial profiling.
• The result: Plasma cell–fibroblast crosstalk is predicted as the strongest interaction in fibrosis-prone hearts, supported by close plasma B cell–fibroblast proximity and B cell accumulation in extracellular matrix-rich scars, maintaining parasite-reactive and heart-autoreactive antibody-secreting pools despite no detectable nearby parasite signal.

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