Heart injury from many causes can end up in a common final pathway of pathologic
remodeling and fibrosis, promoting heart failure development. Dilated cardiomyopathy is an
important cause of heart failure and often results from virus-triggered myocarditis. Monocytes
and monocyte-like cells represent a major subset of heart-infiltrating cells at the injury site.
These bone marrow-derived cells promote not only tissue injury in the short term but also
angiogenesis and collagen deposition in the long term. Thus, they are critically involved in …