Although clinicians have recognized the importance of inflammatory mediators in the pathogenesis of heart disease for well over 200 years, it has taken nearly as many years for clinicians and scientists to focus on the basic biological mechanisms by which inflammatory mediators contribute to the pathogenesis of cardiac disease states. Over the past decade there has been increasing interest in the potential role that inflammatory mediators, play in a variety of cardiac disease states, including chronic heart failure. The Role of Inflammatory Mediators in the Failing Heart provides a state-of-the-art review on inflammatory mediators and the failing heart. This book will serve both as a useful introduction to the field, as well as an update for those interested in the role of inflammatory mediators and the failing heart.

Inhalt

1. Introduction/Brief Overview.- 2. Recent Insights into the Role of Tumor Necrosis Factor in the Failing Heart.- 3. The Role of Interleukin-1 in the Failing Heart.- 4. The Role of Interleukin-6 in the Failing Heart.- 5. The Role of Nitric Oxide in the Failing Heart.- 6. Interactions Between Cytokines and Neurohormonal Systems in the Failing Heart.- 7. Experimental Heart Failures Models of Cytokine Overexpression.- 8. Immunomodulation of Cytokines in Experimental Models of Heart Failure.- 9. The Effect of Cytokines on Cardiac Allograft Function:Tumor Necrosis Factor-?: a Mediator of Chronic Injury.- 10. The Role of Anti-Cytokine Therapy in the Failing Heart.- 11. The Syndrome of Cardiac Cachexia.