Response to Letter Regarding Article, “Peripartum Cardiomyopathy as a Part of Familial Dilated Cardiomyopathy”
This is a response to a letter.
VIEW LETTERWe thank Dr Baruteau et al for their comments. They raise an important issue, and recommend cardiological screening in all first-degree relatives of patients with peripartum cardiomyopathy (PPCM), not only when it concerns PPCM without recovery.
Our findings strongly suggested that a subset of PPCM is part of the spectrum of familial dilated cardiomyopathy.1 The article by Morales et al2 in the same issue of Circulation underscores this. Taking these new data into account, we consider the genetic susceptibility of PPCM properly addressed in the recent statement from the Heart Failure Association of the European Society of Cardiology Working Group on PPCM.3
In our article, we discussed a major limitation of our study: that we had not performed cardiological screening of family members of those PPCM patients who had recovered left ventricular function. We emphasized the importance of studying these cases in the future because they also can be part of familial cardiomyopathy. This is corroborated by the case report by Baruteau et al on the occurrence of PPCM in two sisters with full recovery.4 Besides, apparent recovery is not always true recovery, because it has been reported that patients have died during extended follow-up despite recovery of left ventricular function at 6 months' assessment.5 Thus, we fully agree with Baruteau et al that it is justifiable to offer cardiological screening to first-degree relatives of recovered PPCM patients.
Karin Y. van Spaendonck-Zwarts, MD
J. Peter van Tintelen, MD, PhD
Jan D.H. Jongbloed, PhD Department of Genetics University Medical Centre Groningen University of Groningen Groningen, the Netherlands
Dirk J. van Veldhuisen, MD, PhD
Rik van der Werf, MD
Maarten P. van den Berg, MD, PhD Department of Cardiology University Medical Centre Groningen University of Groningen Groningen, the Netherlands
Walter J. Paulus, MD, PhD Department of Physiology Free University Medical Centre Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Dennis Dooijes, PhD Department of Genetics Erasmus Medical Centre Rotterdam, the Netherlands
References
1.
van Spaendonck-Zwarts KY, van Tintelen JP, van Veldhuisen DJ, van der Werf R, Jongbloed JD, Paulus WJ, Dooijes D, van den Berg MP. Peripartum cardiomyopathy as a part of familial dilated cardiomyopathy. Circulation. 2010;121:2169–2175.
2.
Morales A, Painter T, Li R, Siegfried JD, Li D, Norton N, Hershberger RE. Rare variant mutations in pregnancy-associated or peripartum cardiomyopathy. Circulation. 2010;121:2176–2182.
3.
Sliwa K, Hilfiker-Kleiner D, Petrie MC, Mebazaa A, Pieske B, Buchmann E, Regitz-Zagrosek V, Schaufelberger M, Tavazzi L, van Veldhuisen DJ, Watkins H, Shah AJ, Seferovic PM, Elkayam U, Pankuweit S, Papp Z, Mouquet F, McMurray JJV. Current state of knowledge on aetiology, diagnosis, management, and therapy of peripartum cardiomyopathy: a position statement from the Heart Failure Association of the European Society of Cardiology Working Group on peripartum cardiomyopathy. Eur J Heart Fail. 2010;12:767–778.
4.
Baruteau AE, Leurent G, Schleich JM, Gervais R, Daubert JC, Mabo P. Can peripartum cardiomyopathy be familial? Int J Cardiol. 2009;137:183–185.
5.
Sliwa K, Forster O, Tibazarwa K, Libhaber E, Becker A, Yip A, Hilfiker-Kleiner D. Long-term outcome of Peripartum cardiomyopathy in a population with high seropositivity for Human Immunodeficiency Virus. Int J Cardiol. 2009. Sep 12. [Epub ahead of print].
Information & Authors
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Copyright
© 2011 American Heart Association, Inc.
History
Published online: 18 January 2011
Published in print: 18 January 2011
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None.
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