Cardioimmunologic Response Patterns After an Acute Heart Failure Event: Design and First Results of AHF-ImmunoCS

Figure 1. We hypothesize that the innate immune response immediately triggered by acute decompensation of HF (‘first hit’) provides the pro‐inflammatory context, by activating antigen‐presenting cells, required to break tolerance and induce adaptive immunity to cardiac antigens (‘second hit’) thus contributing to disease progression and adverse prognosis.

Figure 2. Timing of seroconversion in patients hospitalized for decompensated heart failure. In 10 patients negative for heart reactive antibodies (HRAs, measured by immunofluorescence test, IFT) at baseline (BL) but positive at 6 months follow‐up (F6), 80% showed seroconversion already after 6 weeks (F6w). An eleventh patient negative for HRA at BL who missed the F6w is not included in this figure.