Diagnostic Value of HLA Typing in Pathogenesis of Cardiomyopathy

Development of cardiomyopathy (CM) is dependent upon several factors. However, the reaction of the immune response against myocardial tissue due to microbial and viral infections plays an important role in this disease. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between HLAs and their pathogenic mechanisms in the incidence of CM. Relevant literature was identified by a PubMed search (1989-2017) of English-language papers using the terms “Cardiomyopathy”, “Human leukocyte antigen or HLA”, “immune response”, and “polymorphism”. If CM patients are afflicted with viral and microbial infections, HLA class II molecules, which are not expressed on myocardial tissue in normal conditions, are mainly expressed on it. As a result, these HLAs present self- antigens and provoke autoimmune responses against myocardial tissue. On the other hand, the occurrence of polymorphism as well as disrupted expression of miRNAs can affect HLA expression, leading to hypertrophy and fibrosis of cardiac muscle. Finally, it is inferred that the expression evaluation of HLAs as well as identification of polymorphisms in their coding genes can be effective diagnostic factors in the detection of people susceptible to CM.