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Nature Medicine 13, 539–541 (1 May 2007) | doi:10.1038/nm0507-539

Eat your heart out

Richard N Kitsis , Chang-Fu Peng & Ana Maria Cuervo

Heart failure is a common and lethal condition, yet why the heart muscle fails remains a mystery. Alterations in myocardial metabolism, defects in calcium handling, alterations in myosin isoforms, cytoskeletal abnormalities and excessive cardiac myocyte apoptosis have all been implicated as causal factors.