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IL‐6 during Viral‐induced Chronic Autoimmune Myocarditis
Author(s) -
Poffenberger Maya C.,
Horwitz Marc S.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
annals of the new york academy of sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.712
H-Index - 248
eISSN - 1749-6632
pISSN - 0077-8923
DOI - 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04850.x
Subject(s) - myocarditis , medicine , viral myocarditis , immunology , virology
Interleukin (IL)‐6 is a pleiotropic cytokine that plays a key role in a wide variety of diseases. Based on a number of adjuvant‐induced experimental models, IL‐6 is critical to the development of autoimmune diseases including experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, adjuvant‐induced arthritis, and experimental autoimmune myocarditis. However, whether it plays a pathogenic role in viral‐induced autoimmune myocarditis has been less well defined. While experimental models of myocarditis have clearly linked IL‐6 to the generation of pathogenic autoreactive T cells, IL‐6 has exhibited a protective role in autoimmune disease development in viral‐induced disease models. As pathogen infection has been linked to the majority of myocarditis patients, treatments aimed at decreasing IL‐6 levels in the hopes of limiting the autoimmune response run the risk of increasing disease severity.