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The discovery that adenoviruses may cause serious heart inflammation could further jeopardise
their role as vectors in gene therapy research.

Researchers have made genetically altered versions of these viruses, hoping to use them as a means
of ferrying genes into patients to treat diseases from cystic fibrosis to Alzheimer鈥檚. But last year,
scientists at Oxford University found that an adenovirus vector appeared to cause brain damage in
lab animals
(This Week, 11 May 1996, p 6).
The virus had been altered so that it couldn鈥檛 replicate.
But gene therapists suspected that the adenovirus triggered an aggressive immune response, causing
dangerous inflammation.

Now Robert McCarthy of Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore, Maryland, and his colleagues
have linked an adenovirus with life-threatening heart inflammation. They compared heart tissue from
seven myocarditis patients with tissue from six controls. Four of the patients carried an adenovirus,
they said this month at a meeting of the American Heart Association in Florida.

鈥淥ur results suggest an adenovirus may be a causitive agent in a significant proportion of the adult
cases of viral myocarditis,鈥� says McCarthy. 鈥淭his is something for gene therapy researchers to
bear in mind.鈥�

Andrew George, who is developing gene therapy atthe Royal Postgraduate Medical School in London,
says the results raise concern. He hopes other vectors being investigated, such as liposomes, may
be safer.