Transcription profiling of human heart muscle from cardiomyopathy patients

To establish changes in cardiac transcription profiles brought about by fheart failure we collected myocardial samples from patients undergoing cardiac transplantation whose failure arises from different etiologies (e.g. idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy, ischemic cardiomyopathy, alcoholic cardiomyopathy, valvular cardiomyopathy, and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy) and from 'normal' organ donors whose hearts cannot be used for transplants. The transcriptional profile of the mRNA in these samples will be measured with gene array technology. Changes in transcriptional profiles can be correlated with the physiologic profile of heart-failure hearts acquired at the time of transplantation.