“…The immune system is among these, though its role has not been fully de fined [3], The heart has clearly been shown to be a target organ of immune injury [4][5][6][7], Increased antibodies, immunoglobins, and complement are found in rheumatic heart disease, viral cardiomyopathy, Lyme carditis, SLE, and sarcoid [4], The role of inflamma tion and immune injury in atherosclerosis has been a topic of increasing interest [8]. An association between heart failure and re duced T-lymphocyte suppressor function has recently been documented [9], Reduced natu ral killer (NK) cell cytotoxicity [7,10], dimin ished lymphocyte responsiveness to mitogens [11] and altered T-cell suppressor activity [12] have all been observed in patients with idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy. An 'im mune hypothesis' for the pathogenesis of di lated cardiomyopathy has been suggested [4], which proposes the following sequence of events: viral infection with resultant T-lym phocyte system activation, lymphocyte infil tration of the myocardium, subsequent myo cyte necrosis, and ultimately progression to heart failure.…”