Characterization of anti-heart M2 muscarinic receptor antibodies--a combined clinical and experimental study.

To elucidate the relationship between autoimmunity and idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy has been one of today's heated topics in the field of heart research. So far it has been identified that there are a variety of autoantibodies including antireceptor autoantibodies. However, the role of these autoantibodies in the development of dilated cardiomyopathy has not been defined. An increasing number of in vitro studies showed that these autoantibodies had different functions, suggesting that they may play different roles in the pathogenesis of cardiomyopathy. The main purpose of this article is to briefly go through the results obtained from both clinical and experimental in vitro studies on anti-M2 muscarinic receptor antibodies to see where we stand in the understanding of the role of these autoantibodies in the pathogenesis of idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy.