An Evaluation of Autoimmunity's Role in the Pathogenesis of Dressler's Syndrome

Postmyocardial infarction syndrome (Dressler syndrome) developed in 6 patients among 100 cases hospitalized with a diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction. In 100 patients studied prospectively, blood samples drawn on the 14th, 21st and 33rd days of myocardial infarction were examined for autoantibodies against their own cardiac muscle antigens with indirect fluorescence antibody technique. For evaluating cardiac muscle antibody (CMA) positiveness, monkey heart tissue was placed as an antigenic substrate in the solid phase and intermyofibrillar and sarcolemmal-subsarcolemmal fluorescence dying were taken as base. CMA was present mostly on samples of the 14th and 21st days with respect to elevated antibody titres and the number of CMA positive patients. In 8 of 100 acute myocardial infarction patients, CMA were detected. Dressler's syndrome was diagnosed in 6 of 8 patients while the syndrome did not manifest in two of these patients. In agreement with a number of other studies which showed immunologically a valid relation between CMA and the pathogenesis of Dressler's syndrome, we also found a positive relation between the presence of CMA and Dressler's syndrome.