Antibiotic treatment dampened inflammatory responses and prevented lethal heart disease in a mouse model of myocarditis driven by microbiota-derived peptide mimics.
Does antibiotic treatment prevent lethal heart disease in a mouse model of myocarditis?
Commensal Bacteroides-derived peptide mimics prime cardiac myosin-reactive T cells, driving inflammatory cardiomyopathy, which can be prevented by antibiotic treatment in mice.
Peptide mimicry breaks the heart Myocarditis, a prolonged chronic inflammation of heart muscle, can eventually progress to inflammatory cardiomyopathy, a serious condition associated with heart failure. Activated T helper (T H ) cells that recognize myosin heavy chain 6–derived peptides are thought to play a central role in this pathogenesis. Using a mouse model of myocarditis, Gil-Cruz et al. found that cardiac myosin–reactive T H cells are initially primed by myosin-peptide mimics derived from commensal Bacteroides species in the gut (see the Perspective by Epelman). Unlike heathy controls, human myocarditis patients also showed detectable immune reactivity to both Bacteroides and cardiac myosin antigens. Treatment with antibiotics dampened inflammatory responses and prevented lethal heart disease. Science , this issue p. 881 ; see also p. 806
Gil‐Cruz et al. (Fri,) conducted a other in Myocarditis and inflammatory cardiomyopathy. Antibiotics vs. Healthy controls (for human cohort) was evaluated on Immune reactivity to Bacteroides and cardiac myosin antigens, inflammatory responses, and lethal heart disease. Antibiotic treatment dampened inflammatory responses and prevented lethal heart disease in a mouse model of myocarditis driven by microbiota-derived peptide mimics.