Pericardial and Myocardial Disease Associated with Serological Evidence of Infection by Agents of the Psittacosis-Lymphogranuloma Venereum Group (Chlamydiaceae)

Abstract

Nine patients with acute pericarditis or myocarditis, or both, were found to have serological evidence of concurrent infection by a psittacosis agent. Three patients had conclusive epidemiological and clinical evidence of complicating pulmonary psittacosis and demonstrated that psittacosis agent does produce inflammatory heart disease in this geographic area. Six patients had imperfect corroborative evidence of psittacosis and their clinical manifestations were atypical. Indeed, half of these patients were initially believed to have some form of idiopathic myocardial disease. Studies of these patients suggest that psittacotic infection m ay be causal in certain forms of heart disease commonly designated primary myocardial disease.

Background and Current Knowledge ofChlamydia pneumoniaeand Atherosclerosis

“…Cardiologists at the University of Illinois collected a group of myocarditis and pericarditis cases in 1964 in Chicago [33,34]. Many were Chlamydia CF positive but only a few had bird contact.…”

Echocardiographic Follow-up of Chlamydia psittaci Myocarditis

“…dial infarction. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] Furthermore, to our knowledge, the case reported here is the first description of a patient with an infected atrial thrombus. Since the frequency of mitral stenosis with thrombus is high, one might wonder why infection of an atrial thrombus is seemingly rare.…”

Pericardial effusion complicating psittacosis infection.

“…Clinical evidence of pericarditis is rare. Definite clinical and serological evidence of psittacosis was found in only 3 out of 599 unselected cases of acute perimyocarditis reported by Sutton et al (1967). In the present case the diagnosis of acute psittacosis infection was established by the clinical features and the typical acute rise and fall in complement fixing antibody titre to psittacosis-LGV agent.…”