Myocarditis is an inflammation of the myocardium. Clinical presentation ranges from non-specific systematic symptoms to fulminant collapse and sudden death. Sudden death occurs at rates of 8.6-12% and cardiomyopathy at 9%. In active myocarditis, there is inflammatory cellular infiltrate with myocardial necrosis. The disease is distinguished by clinical presentation in fulminant and non-fulminan...

BACKGROUND Enteroviruses and adenoviruses have been considered the most common causes of viral myocarditis, but parvovirus B19 (PVB19) and human herpesvirus 6 (HHV6) are increasingly found in endomyocardial biopsy samples. METHODS AND RESULTS Consequently, our aim was to evaluate the prevalence and clinical presentation of cardiac PVB19 and/or HHV6 infection in a cohort of myocarditis patient...

Acute myocarditis can be caused by a variety of organisms. Congestive heart failure and death may occur as a consequence of these infections. In recent years cardiac imaging, by echocardiography and magnetic resonance and nuclear imaging has become a useful adjunct in the diagnosis and management of infectious myocarditis. Specific examples of their usefulness will be given in the discussions o...

The myocardial uptake of 125I- and 131I-antimyosin monoclonal antibody Fab in experimental myocarditis in BALB/c mice induced by encephalomyocarditis virus was studied. The biodistribution of 125I-antimyosin demonstrated that the highest ratio of radioactivity appears in the heart of infected mice on day 14 (the ratio of percent dose per gram for the organ to percent dose per milliliter for blo...

Background Acute myocarditis (AM) is an inflammatory disease of the heart muscle. Clinical presentation and outcome are variable, ranging from asymptomatic to fulminant myocarditis (FM), presenting with decompensated heart failure or cardiogenic shock needing inotropic or mechanical circulatory support. Cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) is increasingly employed in the diagnosis and follow-up (f....

AIMS Coxsackievirus B3 (CVB3) is known to cause a variety of human diseases including acute and chronic myocarditis as well as dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM). However, the mechanisms by which CVB3 causes diseases are not well understood. METHODS AND RESULTS Studies identifying protein-protein interactions during CVB3 infection are useful in delineating the pathogenesis of acute or chronic myoca...

UNLABELLED Acute viral myocarditis is one of the causes of heart failure. Cardiac asthma is commonly observed in elderly patients with left heart failure. If the pulmonary manifestations are prominent it can mask the involvement of heart. We report a young case of viral myocarditis mimicking acute asthma attack. CASE PRESENTATION A 27-year-old young man with a history of asthma presented to t...

Background acute myocarditis (AM) clinical onset can span from subclinical disease to acute heart failure (AHF) ventricular fibrillation (VF) or sudden cardiac death in young adults. Myocarditis can underly the aetiology of other cardiomyopathies (CM) such as dilated CM arrhythmogenic left or right ventricle CM. Aim of the study was to evaluate the relationship between myocardial oedema and lat...

RATIONALE One-third of myocarditis cases progresses to dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), but the mechanisms controlling this process are largely unknown. CD4(+) T helper (Th)17 cells have been implicated in the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases, but the role of Th17-produced cytokines during inflammation-induced cardiac remodeling has not been previously studied. OBJECTIVE We examined the impor...

Identification of viral myocarditis offers problems; pathologists fail to agree on the definition of the disease and biopsy-proven cases documented in the English literature are still few in number. Though endomyocardial biopsy is becoming a standard procedure at many medical centers, tissue sampling, especially in cases of patchy myocarditis, can result in further diagnostic difficulties. Whil...