Osteopontin (OPN) is not expressed in healthy heart while, its expression is dramatically increased in cardiomyocytes and inflammatory cells during cardiomyopathies and heart failure. However its role in the development of heart diseases is not known. To understand whether OPN is involved in cardiomyopathy, we created a transgenic mouse (MHC-OPN) expressing recombinant OPN (rOPN) specifically in cardiomyocytes using aMHC promoter-directed OPN expression and tTA technology. In these mice, rOPN expression could be regulated by doxycyclin oral administration. After birth, MHC-OPN young mice were phenotypically indistinguishable from their littermate controls, but most of them died early between the 8 th and 15 th weeks after birth with a half life of 12 weeks. However, less than 10 % MHC-OPN mice survived and were still alive 30 weeks after birth. Inhibition of recombinant OPN expression by doxycyclin at the beginning of T cell infiltration (5 weeks after birth) or when DCM was initiated (11 weeks after birth) reduced myocarditis and thus avoided the early death. Electrocardiography demonstrated atrio-ventricular and intra ventricular defects. Moreover, echocardiography showed left ventricular dilation without hypertrophy and a systolic dysfunction, as indicated by reduced left ventricular fractional shortening (control mice: 29,8 ± 2,0 %, n = 13 ; and MHC-OPN mice: 13,7 ± 4,0 %, n = 5 ; T test p<0.05). In vitro histology confirmed that mice died because of a dilated cardiomyopathy associated with a strong fibrosis. By immunohistology, we demonstrated that OPN expression in cardiomyocytes induced an important cell infiltration including some macrophages and a large number of fibroblasts and activated CD4+ and CD8+ T cells. All together these experiments suggested that chronic OPN expression is required for DCM development inducing Tcell activation and thus a chronic myocarditis resulting in the dilated cardiomyopathy.