Involvement of BAG3 and HSPB7 loci in various etiologies of systolic heart failure: Results of a European collaboration assembling more than 2000 patients

Heart failure (HF), a major public health burden affecting 2% of industrialized populations, is a syndrome resulting from structural or functional myocardial impairment leading to inadequate cardiac output to meet the body's metabolic demands [1]. Half of HF patients present systolic dysfunction (systolic-HF), also called reduced ejection fraction (HF-REF), a disease related to various causes including idiopathic Dilated Cardiomyopathy(DCM) and Coronary Artery Diseases (CAD) (ischemic-HF). HF is usually a multifactorial disease but the genetic variants contributing to its susceptibility or its severity may be different according to its underlying causes [2] and their identification is only beginning.[...]