Myocardial infarction may be an infectious disease

Posted by DaveZale 9/13/2025

Myocardial infarction may be an infectious disease(www.tuni.fi)

Paper: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/JAHA.125.041521

498 points | 179 commentspage 2

imperfect_light 9/14/2025|

Have always been fascinated with Paul Ewald's arguments (as laid out in his books The New Germ Theory of Disease and Evolution of Infectious Disease) that most chronic illnesses are due to pathogens.

prmph 9/14/2025|

Interesting, I'm noticing this pattern too more and more. The classic case was of course stomach ulcers. Now cardiovascular. Wouldn't be surprised if at least some neuro-degnerative diseases are also possibly caused by infections

imperfect_light 9/16/2025||

Now we're seeing more colon cancer in young people. All of the discussion is around factors that change slowly (diet, alcohol, exercise), no one I've heard has pointed out that a pathogen would explain a quick change.

anotherpaul 9/14/2025||

"The most unique finding in our study was that viridans streptococci seemed to colonize the lipid core and wall of an atheroma as a biofilm and that this biofilm was not recognized by cells of the innate immune system. "

This is a pretty cool finding. Biofilms are also beyond reach of antibacterials usually. And seing a commensal become a problem due to "location, location, location" is also cool.

Nice article. Cool leads

atombender 9/14/2025|

Streptococcus pyogenes (group A streptococci) are well known for being able to form this kind of biofilm [1] and stay hidden from the immune system.

Chronic strep throat (sometimes leading to guttate psoriasis) are thought to be due to this feature. The bacteria can form these biofilms in many places, including the tonsils. It's implicated in things like periodontitis. (Another streptococcus, S. mutans, causes cavities.)

They're very sneaky bacteria, due to what's called molecular mimicry. The bacterial surface has a protein called M protein, and some of this protein's epitopes (stretches of amino acids) are the same or similar to human proteins like myosin, similar enough that antibodies cause cross-reactivity with human tissue. This is why strep bacteria can cause rheumatic fever and some other diseases.

Strep has also been implicated in psoriasis; we have good evidence that the cross-reactivity is what kick-starts the disease and is in some way responsible for why it's chronic.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK587105/

_heimdall 9/14/2025||

Titles like this are very confusing. The paper better explains it, but a disease can't be contagious or infectious. The paper describes a link between a potential bacterial infection and myocardial infarctions that may take years or decades to develop.

The disease is only the named group of symptoms. The potential cause of the disease is the bacterial infection. Those are very different concepts.

liveoneggs 9/14/2025||

There are already pretty serious blood disorders linked directly to oral health (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actinomycosis almost took down slackware linux)

I think I'll go floss.

DaveZale 9/14/2025|

yeah and dehydration is not good, saliva flow is protective

faangguyindia 9/14/2025||

Wasn't that a plot in DBZ where a virus weakens Goku's heart?

jondwillis 9/14/2025|

https://dragonball.fandom.com/wiki/Heart_Virus Indeed!

th0ma5 9/14/2025||

Wild I see only one mention of COVID so far, it has been shown to attack all kinds of organ tissues, the perspectives around "with or from" somehow permanently prevents people from discussing the underlying changes from this continued global cycling of the pathogen.

tsoukase 9/14/2025||

Arterial plaque is a long standing, foreign body without vessels causing high flows. No surprise it can be infected by bacteria sometime. That is infection can exacerbate the MI, not cause it.

neehao 9/13/2025||

see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17420199/

Traubenfuchs 9/14/2025|

It's been known for many years that the flu vaccine reduces heart attack incidence. The flu either causes lasting damage to the cardiovascular system or directly causes heart attacks.

This is perfectly well known and absolutely nothing new.

This study merely expands research on the topic (focus on bacteria+biofilm instead of flu).

So "Myocardial infarction may be an infectious disease" is a weird clickbait title. We know. We knew for a long time.

We also have quite a few of anti biofilm agents in IV formulations that could have an effect inside of the cardiovascular system if used in high dosages, but the molecules are old, cheap and unsexy, so no one will try. (ambroxol and NAC come to mind)

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