<b>Conclusions:</b> These results suggest that the characteristics of lactation-induced cardiac hypertrophy in wild-type mice are different from exercise-induced cardiac hypertrophy, and that the endogenous ANP/BNP-NPR1 system plays an important role in protecting the maternal heart from interleukin-6-induced inflammation and remodeling in the lactation period, a condition mimicking peripartum cardiomyopathy.
No statistically significant differences in the frequency of IL-6-174G/C gene polymorphism between chagasic patients and controls or between asymptomatic and individuals with cardiomyopathy were observed.
This biological framework, which is also involved in progression of cardiomyopathy in humans, is more pronounced in HIV-infected patients, in whom proinflammatory cytokines TNF-alpha, IL-1 and IL-6 are increased, resulting in an enhanced expression of cardiac iNOS, especially in patients with a low CD4 T cell count.