Cytokines as potential novel therapeutic targets in severe inflammatory cardiomyopathy

BACKGROUND: Despite currently available state-of-the art therapies, a substantial proportion of patients with inflammatory cardiomyopathy progresses to advanced heart failure. There is an urgent need for novel therapies to improve outcomes. We hypothesized that elevated cyto-kine levels in inflammatory cardiomyopathy may lead to cardiac injury and that specific cyto-kines are associated with severely decreased left ventricular function consequently, thereby suggesting their potential as therapeutic targets. METHODS AND RESULTS: Blood samples collected from 529 patients at 2 registries were inves-tigated. First, in a derivation cohort of inflammatory cardiomyopathy from our medical center (n=63), we discovered cytokines that correlate inversely with severely decreased left ventricu-lar ejection fraction (LVEF). We confirmed reproducibility of our results in an independent cohort from a national registry (n=425) and to some degree generalizability in a small cohort of idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (IDCM, n=41). In total, we identified 82 cytokines asso-ciated with severely decreased LVEF (FDR < 0.05); a small portion had been previously pro-posed as therapeutic targets, while others emerged as novel discoveries. Finally, real-world data from electronic medical records further indicated the potential of inhibitors targeting cy-tokines of interest to confer a cardioprotective effect. CONCLUSIONS: We identified 82 cytokines associated with severe inflammatory cardiomyopa-thy. Our data were highly significant, reproducible, and generalizable to IDCM. The fact that some of the cytokines had been suggested as potential targets in prior literature supports va-lidity and plausibility of our data. Given that inhibition of cytokines is technically feasible, the identified proteins are compelling potential novel therapeutic targets