Evidence Of Myocarditis Research Articles

Attenuated measles vaccine in children with cardiac disease.

Naturally acquired measles appears to be especially hazardous to patients with chronic ailments. The increased risk of measles to cardiac patients might be attributable either to a deleterious action of measles virus directly on the myocardium or to an increased demand for work imposed upon a defective cardiovascular system during the acute disease. Evidence of myocarditis has been well documented in association with some viral diseases 1 , but not frequently with measles. On the other hand, studies of electrocardiographic records of children hospitalized for measles have revealed transitory abnormalities in approximately one-fifth to onefourth of the cases studied, thus suggesting more frequent cardiac involvement than would otherwise be suspected. 2,3 At present, the extent to which measles causes heart failure or influences the rate of survival in cardiac patients is not known precisely. From clinical experience, however, measles can be assumed to impose an additional risk to be avoided if

Reserpine effects and experimentally produced lesions of cardiovascular sensitization and eosinophilia

1. 1. A series of thirty rabbits were subjected to active sensitization and subanaphylactic challenge techniques with bovine serum favorable for the development of histologic lesions of glomerulitis, myocarditis, and pulmonary periarteritis and panarteritis. Fifteen of these animals were simultaneously treated with reserpine in an attempt to induce and maintain an associated state of serotonin tissue release and depletion. 2. 2. The development of lesions of proliferative glomerulitis was found to be unaffected by reserpine treatment. 3. 3. Evidence of myocarditis was found in all thirty animals, but it was considerably less extensive and of a milder degree in the reserpine-treated group. 4. 4. All fifteen rabbits in the control sensitized and challenged group demonstrated lesions of pulmonary periarteritis and panarteritis. In five of the fifteen reserpine-treated animals evidence of vasculitis was absent and in the remaining four rabbits the lesions of pulmonary arteritis were of an equivocal nature, in contrast to those observed in the untreated group. 5. 5. Crude beef-liver extract was administered to twelve rabbits in accordance with a technique designed to effect eosinophilia of the peripheral blood and bone marrow and eosinophilic granulocytic cellular infiltration into cutaneous tissue sites. Six of these animals were simultaneously subjected to the serotonin-releasing effects of reserpine. 6. 6. Reserpine treatment failed to influence the development of peripheral blood or bone marrow eosinophilia or the histologic lesions of eosinophilic granular cell infiltrations into cutaneous sites.