Cardiac autoimmunity in HIV related heart muscle disease

Objective—To assess the frequency of circulating cardiac specific autoantibodies in HIV positive patients with and without echocardiographic evidence of left ventricular dysfunction. Subjects—74 HIV positive patients including 28 with echocardiographic evidence of heart muscle disease, 52 HIV negative people at low risk of HIV infection, and 14 HIV negative drug users who had all undergone non-invasive cardiac assessment were studied along with a group of 200 healthy blood donors. Results—Cardiac autoantibodies detected by indirect immunofluorescence (serum dilution 1/10) were more common in the HIV positive patients (15%), particularly the HIV heart muscle disease group (21%), than in HIV negative controls (3.5%) (both p