Fractalkine in human inflammatory cardiomyopathy

BackgroundCardiac inflammation is important for the prognosis of patients with inflammatory cardiomyopathy (CMi), but the mechanisms leading to it are not fully elucidated.ObjectiveTo study the role of fractalkine (CX3CL1) in chemotactic and adhesive properties of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) in patients with CMi.Methods and resultsPatients with enterovirus (EV)-positive CMi, patients with virus-negative CMi, patients with parvovirus B19 (B19) genomes with low intramyocardial inflammation and patients without cardiac inflammation and viral infection in the endomyocardial biopsy (EMB) were enrolled (n=10/group). The expression of CX3CL1 and monocyte chemoattractant protein (MCP-1) in EMBs was significantly increased in EV-positive and virus-negative patients with CMi in contrast to controls and B19-positive patients (EV+ vs controls: CX3CL1-area fraction (AF) % 0.078±0.012 vs 0.009±0.003 p