Infiltration of the myocardium with various cell types, cytokines and chemokines plays a crucial role in the pathogenesis of cardiomyopathies including inflammatory cardiomyopathies and myocarditis. A more comprehensive understanding of the precise immune mechanisms involved in acute and chronic myocarditis is essential to develop novel therapeutic approaches. This review offers a comprehensive overview of the current knowledge of the immune landscape in cardiomyopathies based on etiology. It identifies gaps in our knowledge about cardiac inflammation and emphasizes the need for new translational approaches to improve our understanding thus enabling development of novel early detection methods and more effective treatments.
Competing Interests: TL has no conflicts of interest related to this manuscript, but received educational and research grants from Abbott, Ablative Solutions, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Daichi Sankyo, Novartis, Sanofi, Servier and Vifor and honoraria from Amgen, Dacadoo, Daichi-Sankyo, Glaxo, Smith & Kline, Firalis, Menarini Foundation, NeuroImmune, Novo Nordisk. BH is inventor on patents that use RNA for diagnosis of myocarditis. Patent protection is in process for MCG for diagnosis and measurement of therapy response in inflammatory cardiomyopathy and for cytokines as targets for therapy in patients with inflammatory cardiomyopathy and in heart failure. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The Reviewer DP declared a past co-authorship with the authors BH, TL, and PS.
(© 2024 Musigk, Suwalski, Golpour, Fairweather, Klingel, Martin, Frustaci, Cooper, Lüscher, Landmesser and Heidecker.)