In addition to myocardial hypertrophy, studies have shown that the progression of heart failure is also related to extensive fibrosis, abnormal activation of insulin-like growth factor (IGF)-Akt signal, cardiac hyperstress mediated by β-adrenoceptor, and damage of autophagy (Tian et al., 2015; Lu et al., 2016; Zhang W. et al., 2016). Here, IGF1 is linked to cardiac hypertrophy.