OBJECTIVE To assess the prevalence and significance of enteroviral genome within myocardial biopsy specimens taken from patients with idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy and from controls. DESIGN Prospective evaluation of myocardial tissue for the presence of an enteroviral genome by the polymerase chain reaction. SETTING A tertiary referral centre for patients with idiopathic dilated cardiom...

Introduction Catheter ablation is an important treatmentmodality formanagement of ventricular arrhythmias in the setting of implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) shocks and ventricular tachycardia (VT) storm. The frequency of patients with nonischemic cardiomyopathy requiring ablation for ventricular arrhythmias is increasing.Arrhythmias of right ventricular (RV) origin are less common t...

Tissue from the explanted hearts of 21 patients with idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy or 19 patients with other specific heart muscle diseases were investigated for presence of enterovirus-specific RNA with an enterovirus group-specific cDNA probe. This was complementary to coxsackievirus B2 RNA sequences between nucleotide numbers 6,550 and 7,400, which are highly conserved between enteroviru...

+ 6%). The exercise time and maximal heart rate were similar in the two groups. Two patients with cardiomyopathy and 11 with coronary artery disease had a positive exercise ECG (p < 0.05). Thallium scans showed perfusion defects in all 25 patients. The perfusion defects were complete in nine coronary artery disease patients (60%) and in one patient (10%) with cardiomyopathy (p < 0.05). Extensiv...

RESULTS We identified 26 distinct, rare truncating variants in eight genes among women with peripartum cardiomyopathy. The prevalence of truncating variants (26 in 172 [15%]) was significantly higher than that in a reference population of 60,706 persons (4.7%, P = 1.3×10−7) but was similar to that in a cohort of patients with dilated cardiomyopathy (55 of 332 patients [17%], P = 0.81). Two thir...

+ 6%). The exercise time and maximal heart rate were similar in the two groups. Two patients with cardiomyopathy and 11 with coronary artery disease had a positive exercise ECG (p < 0.05). Thallium scans showed perfusion defects in all 25 patients. The perfusion defects were complete in nine coronary artery disease patients (60%) and in one patient (10%) with cardiomyopathy (p < 0.05). Extensiv...