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Cardiovascular Biology

Escaped DNA inflames the heart

Nature volume 485, pages 179–180 (2012)Cite this article

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High blood pressure can damage heart muscle cells and their mitochondrial organelles. DNA from degraded mitochondria has been shown to trigger inflammation leading to heart failure. See Letter p.251

Heart failure is caused by weakening of the organ's muscle that results in ineffective pumping of blood around the body1. This disorder is a common result of diverse maladies, including heart attacks, high blood pressure and heart-valve problems. All these conditions generate mechanical and chemical signals that activate stress pathways, which ultimately cause heart-muscle dysfunction, cell death and alterations in the cells' milieu. This, in turn, results in changes in heart size and shape that lead over time to severe heart-muscle dysfunction and patient death. Cytokine proteins, produced by the cells of the immune system and by heart cells, play a part in these processes by promoting inflammation2. On page 251 of this issue, Oka et al.3 describe a pathway that links the stresses that initiate heart failure with the production of cytokines in the muscle cells.

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Figure 1: A stressed heart cell.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Klitos Konstantinidis and Richard N. Kitsis are in the Departments of Medicine and Cell Biology and at the Wilf Family Cardiovascular Research Institute, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York 10461, USA.,

    Klitos Konstantinidis & Richard N. Kitsis

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  1. Klitos Konstantinidis
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  2. Richard N. Kitsis
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Correspondence to Richard N. Kitsis.

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Konstantinidis, K., Kitsis, R. Escaped DNA inflames the heart. Nature 485, 179–180 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/485179a

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