Can antiheart autoantibodies predict disease risk in asymptomatic relatives of patients with dilated cardiomyopathy?

Timothy M Olson

This article has no abstract so we have provided the first paragraph of the full text.

Idiopathic DCM has been increasingly recognized as a heritable disorder through clinical and basic research carried out over the past 15 years.^{1, 2} Even in genetically predisposed individuals, however, its onset is insidious with decades of clinically silent, yet relentlessly progressive, myocardial remodeling. Consequently, patients presenting with symptomatic, end-stage DCM frequently have advanced heart failure, are less likely to respond to pharmacotherapy than those with early-stage disease, and have high morbidity and mortality. Moreover, family history often fails to discriminate the 25–50% of DCM cases that are, in fact, familial. Diagnosis of DCM in at-risk relatives, therefore, requires serial echocardiographic and electrocardiographic screening, regardless of family history. Indeed, clinical surveillance in families can uncover isolated LVE, or abnormalities of rhythm or conduction, as early traits of DCM.^{1, 2, 3}

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