Primary heart failure in cardiomyopathy occurs in (1) hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a genetic disease of the sarcomere; and (2) in dilated cardiomyopathy. The latter is often regarded as idiopathic in origin, but requires exclusion of all possible etiologies which are becoming easier to identify with modern investigative techniques. Tachycardia-induced cardiomyopathy is now increasingly recogniz...

Introduction: Noncompaction cardiomyopathy (NccM) is a rare form of cardiomyopathy. the American Heart Association classified it as a genetic cardiomyopathy. the pathogenesis of this condition is attributed to the failure of trabecular myocardium to compact and underdeveloped microcoronary circulation. case report: We present a case of a 72-year-old African American female who presented with sh...

background: the right ventricular (rv) dyssynchrony has not been studied extensively and the existing literature has established the effect of cardiac resynchronization therapy (crt) on the left ventricular (lv) dyssynchrony, but there is a dearth of data on the effect of crt on the forgotten ventricle . we sought to evaluate the presence of mechanical right ventricular dyssynchrony in patients...

The reported frequency of circulating heart reactive antibodies in cardiomyopathies has varied and their significance is unknown. In this study such antibodies were sought in patients with primary congestive and hypertrophic cardiomyopathies and other heart diseases. Standard "single sandwich" and the more sensitive "double sandwich" indirect immunofluorescence techniques failed to disclose a s...

OBJECTIVE Levels of Ca2+ regulatory proteins have been extensively analyzed in cardiomyopathies as possible indices of change in sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) structure and function. Measures of calsequestrin (CSQ), however, a critical protein component of the Ca2+ release complex in junctional sarcoplasmic reticulum, have provided little or no evidence of underlying dysfunction. We previously re...

Developing myocardial cells respond to signals from the endocardial layer to form a network of trabeculae that characterize the ventricles of the vertebrate heart. Abnormal myocardial trabeculation results in specific cardiomyopathies in humans and yet trabecular development is poorly understood. We show that trabeculation requires Brg1, a chromatin remodeling protein, to repress ADAMTS1 expres...

The sequence of atrial natriuretic factor (ANF) has been determined, as well as the complete structure of the rat and human complementary DNA and gene. ANF and ANF messenger RNA are present not only in atria but also in ventricles. The circulating form of ANF has been identified as the C-terminal of the molecule, ANF (Ser 99-Tyr 126). The isolated secretory granules of rat atrial cardiocytes co...

Acute regional ischemia in the heart can lead to cardiac arrhythmias such as ventricular fibrillation (VF), which in turn compromise cardiac output and result in secondary global cardiac ischemia. The secondary ischemia may influence the underlying arrhythmia mechanism. A recent clinical study documents the effect of global cardiac ischaemia on the mechanisms of VF. During 150 seconds of global...

We recently documented the expression of a novel human mRNA variant encoding a yet uncharacterized SERCA [SR (sarcoplasmic reticulum)/ER (endoplasmic reticulum) Ca2+-ATPase] protein, SERCA2c [Gélébart, Martin, Enouf and Papp (2003) Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 303, 676-684]. In the present study, we have analysed the expression and functional characteristics of SERCA2c relative to SERCA2a and...