Ideopathic Cardiomyopathy
Idiopathic cardiomyopathy refers to a group of disorders without an identifiable cause which weakens the heart muscle and reduces the efficiency of blood pumping by the heart.
Idiopathic cardiomyopathy has been theorized to have many causes among which nutritional deficiencies, deposits in the heart, stress, alcoholism, anemia and coronary heart disease are the most commonly blamed.
Ideopathic Cardiomyopathy
Another possible reason for idiopathic cardiomyopathy is believed to be myocarditis (a viral infection of the heart muscle) but there has been no satisfactory explanation for why some patients seem to recover the proper working of the heart muscle while others experience heart muscle failure.
Idiopathic cardiomyopathy does not allow the heart to pump blood properly through the body and is responsible for the improper functioning of the liver, lungs and other critical systems of the body.
It is believed that people who are obese, who smoke, who use certain drugs and medicines and have a family history of cardiac diseases run a higher risk of suffering from idiopathic cardiomyopathy. This condition may also be caused due to damage to the heart which results in fibrosis (formation of scar tissue) of the heart muscle as well as by deposits accumulating in the heart muscles and tissues.
Some studies have been carried out to if there is a genetic factor responsible for idiopathic cardiomyopathy. In one of these studies, a comparison was carried out between the total DNA sequences in the mitochondia of patients who are suffering from idiopathic cardiomyopathy and those suffering from Parkinson's disease. This comparison revealed an observable bunching of point mutations in both sets of patients. This study also discovered an inverse factoring between the total number of base-substitutions and the patient's life, that is, as the number of the substitutions increase, the patient's life expectancy decreases. A study of the nature of these mutations reveals that idiopathic cardiomyopathy and Parkinson's disease belong to the same gene family.