IL6 and Myocardial fibrosis: Meléndez et al. (2010)) found that IL-6 promoted collagen synthesis in cardiac fibroblasts and led to cardiac interstitial fibrosis. Zhang et al. suggested that IL-6 promoted the development of diabetic myocardial fibrosis by enhancing TGF-β1 and inhibiting miRNA-29 expression, thereby increasing collagen synthesis, and that (Zhang et al., 2014) knockdown of the IL-6 gene attenuated the development of myocardial fibrosis in DCM.