The cardiac conduction system is a specialized tract of myocardial cells responsible for maintaining normal cardiac rhythm. Given its critical role in coordinating cardiac performance, a detailed analysis of the molecular mechanisms underlying conduction system formation should inform our understanding of arrhythmia pathophysiology and affect the development of novel therapeutic strategies. His...

Correlation of electrocardiographic abnormalities occurring postoperatively with lesions of the conduction system found at autopsy was done in 20 dogs which had received cardiac homografts. The incidence of arrhythmias closely paralleled the severity of rejection injury found within the heart and specifically within the conduction system. Severe pathological changes in the conduction system (gr...

The PRKAG2 cardiac syndrome is a rare, autosomaldominant genetic disease of the heart. Genetic defects in the Prkag2 gene, encoding the regulatory subunit of AMPactivated protein kinase (AMPK), lead to a diverse cardiac phenotype of variable clinical expressivity.1 Typically, affected patients present in late adolescence with frequent paroxysms of supraventricular arrhythmias, demonstrate ventr...

Lyme disease is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi. When untreated, infection may spread to the heart, nervous system, and joints. Cardiac involvement usually manifests as abnormalities of the conduction system and bradycardia. Treatment of Lyme disease is generally effective, with a subset of patients experiencing persistent, sometimes long-term symptoms called ...

BACKGROUND Cardiac conduction disturbances are common in spondyloarthropathies such as ankylosing spondylitis (AS). Whether their occurrence can be linked to signs and symptoms of rheumatic disease activity is an unsettled issue addressed in this study. METHODS In this cross-sectional study patients with AS according to modified New York criteria but without psoriasis, inflammatory bowel dise...

BACKGROUND Cardiac conduction disease is a clinically and genetically heterogeneous disorder characterized by defects in electrical impulse generation and conduction and is associated with sudden cardiac death. METHODS AND RESULTS We studied a 4-generation family with autosomal dominant progressive cardiac conduction disease, including atrioventricular conduction block and sinus bradycardia, ...

LMNA mutations have been associated with familial or sporadic dilated cardiomyopathy (DC), with or without conduction system disease. We studied the LMNA gene in 67 consecutive patients with DC (18 had familial DC, 17 had possible familial DC, and 32 sporadic DC). From genomic DNA, coding regions of the LMNA gene were amplified by polymerase chain reaction, studied by single-strand conformation...

The generation and propagation of the cardiac impulse is the central function of the cardiac conduction system (CCS). Impulse initiation occurs in nodal tissues that have high levels of automaticity, but slow conduction properties. Rapid impulse propagation is a feature of the ventricular conduction system, which is essential for synchronized contraction of the ventricular chambers. When functi...

BACKGROUND Fahr's disease is a rare neurodegenerative disorder of unknown cause characterized by idiopathic basal ganglia calcification that is associated with neuropsychiatric and cognitive impairment. No case of Fahr's disease with associated cardiac conduction disease has been described in the literature to date. The objective of this case report was to describe a young female with various c...

Congenital heart defects often include altered conduction as well as morphological changes. Model organisms, like the frog Xenopus laevis, offer practical advantages for the study of congenital heart disease. X. laevis embryos are easily obtained free living, and the developing heart is readily visualized. Functional and morphological evidence for a conduction system is available for adult frog...