Funding outcome

Viral infections of the heart are poorly understood and are an underappreciated cause of heart disease and death, in particular, during infancy. For unknown reasons, neonates are particularly susceptible to the development of viral myocarditis, with only ~30% surviving. For those that survive, many develop heart disease, which also leads to increased rates of death and long-term need for medical care. Immune cells help clear viral infections but can also cause inflammatory injury. A major problem in the field is that we did not know what immune cells reside in the heart until recently, nor did we understand what their role is during infection (protective or destructive). In order to improve our understanding, we characterized the role of immune cells residing in the heart in viral infection in adult mice. Adult mice are protected from severe heart damage after viral infection unless they lack specific subsets of immune cells, in which case they become susceptible to infection. It is important to note that neonatal and adolescent mice similarly succumb to viral heart infection as children do. We know that some differences between young and adult mice exist regarding the function and components of the immune system, especially in the heart. Our goal here is to understand how differences in the antiviral responses between neonatal and adult mice determine the outcome of heart infections and design strategies to make neonatal defenses behave like the adult ones, thereby preventing death or long-term heart complications.