Acute myocarditis is one of the most challenging diseases to diagnose and treat in cardiology. The true incidence of the disease is unknown. Viral infection is the most common etiology. Modern techniques have improved the ability to diagnose specific viral pathogens in the myocardium. Currently, parvovirus B19 and adenoviruses are most frequently identified in endomyocardial biopsies. Most pati...

Picornaviruses are frequently implicated as the etiological agents of acute myocarditis. This association is based historically on serological evidence of rising antibody titers to specific pathogens and more recently on identification of viral genomic material in endocardial biopsy specimens through in situ hybridization. Only rarely is infectious virus isolated from either the patient or the ...

OBJECTIVES This study, performed in a murine model of encephalomyocarditis virus myocarditis, used a new Millar 1.4F conductance-micromanometer system for the in vivo determination of the left ventricular (LV) pressure-volume relationship (PVR). BACKGROUND Viral myocarditis is an important cause of congestive heart failure and may lead to dilated cardiomyopathy. However, the hemodynamic chang...

Myocarditis is a challenging diagnosis due to the extreme diversity of clinical manifestations. The actual incidence of myocarditis is also difficult to determine as endomyocardial biopsy (EMB), the diagnostic gold standard, is used infrequently. Nevertheless, in up to 30 % of patients with biopsy-proven myocarditis, progression to dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) can occur and is associated with a...

Myocarditis is a common inflammatory cardiomyopathy, associated with cardiomyocyte apoptosis, which can lead to chronic left ventricular dysfunction. Under conventional heart failure therapy, inflammatory cardiomyopathy typically has a progressive course, indicating a need for alternative therapeutic strategies to improve long-term outcomes. Experimental and clinical studies consistently suppor...

The objective of this study was to apply transthoracic Doppler echocardiography (TTDE) in mice to study coronary flow reserve (CFR), an index of coronary microvascular function, in mild and severe forms of experimental viral myocarditis. Regarding methodology, BALB/c mice were infected with cardiotropic coxsackieviruses causing either a mild (Nancy strain) or a severe (Woodruff strain) myocardi...

UNLABELLED 99mTc-Annexin-V (ANX), which allows in vivo detection of apoptotic cells, is potentially a promising noninvasive tool to diagnose myocarditis. To test this assumption, we compared the myocardial uptake of ANX (imaging and quantitative autoradiography) in experimental subacute myocarditis (Wistar Bonn/Kobori rats [WBN/Kob]) and in normal Wistar rats. WBN/Kob is an inbred strain of Wis...

Ventricular tachycardia (VT) has a direct relationship with sudden cardiac death (SCD) and risk stratification is essential for further treatment. In a context of a structural normal heart, idiopathic VT is the principal suspicion. Cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) is a powerfull tool to evaluate the anatomic substrate of ventricular arrhytmias. Myocarditis is a frequent cause of a arrhytmias, a...

A 36-year-old female patient who was diagnosed with chronic myocarditis as an initial manifestation of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) was admitted to our hospital. At her third occurrence of heart failure, we performed an endomyocardial biopsy and proved chronic myocarditis with SLE. Subsequently, she was treated with prednisolone and the immunosuppressive agent mizoribine (MZR), and her ca...

Background Myocarditis can present with acute coronary syndromelike (ACS) symptoms, new-onset heart failure (NOHF) or life threatening arrhythmias (LTA) with various ECG and laboratory test abnormalities. Cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) tissue characterization using Late Gadolinium Enhancement (LGE) and T2 weighted (T2W) imaging is the non-invasive diagnostic tool of choice. The relationship b...