Clinical Resources
Guidelines and Statements
Review Articles
A comprehensive, highly cited 2020 review in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, led by Dr. Melinda Davis.
A 2024 review in The New England Journal of Medicine by Dr. Zolt Arany offers a comprehensive, expert overview of peripartum cardiomyopathy.
A state-of-the-art review in the European Heart Journal providing a comprehensive overview of peripartum cardiomyopathy, spanning genetics, pathophysiology, and management.
Honigberg and Givertz’s 2019 BMJ review on peripartum cardiomyopathy offers a clear, clinically grounded summary of this rare form of heart failure that arises in late pregnancy or the early postpartum period. The article outlines the epidemiology, risk factors, evolving insights into vasculo-hormonal and genetic mechanisms, and key clinical outcomes—from variable recovery of systolic function to complications such as arrhythmia and thromboembolism. It also reviews standard heart failure management tailored to pregnancy/lactation and highlights gaps in understanding that are priorities for future research.
Genetic Articles
This study by Maamari et al. in JAMA Cardiology that polygenic risk accounts for a large portion of genetic susceptibility in peripartum cardiomyopathy, with approximately 50% of PPCM patients having high polygenic scores without identifiable monogenic variants, fundamentally shifting understanding from a primarily monogenic to a predominantly polygenic disease.
This report by Van Spaendonck-Zwarts et al. reported in the European Heart Journal that targeted next-generation sequencing of 18 families with both PPCM and DCM identified pathogenic mutations in 22% of families, with TTN mutations being the most common finding. This study provided early evidence that PPCM can be an initial manifestation of familial dilated cardiomyopathy, with affected PPCM patients showing notably low rates of left ventricular recovery.
The study by Goli et al. demonstrated in Circulation that 10.4% of women with PPCM harbor TTN truncating variants (OR 9.4 vs. reference population), and additionally identified overrepresentation of truncating variants in FLNC, DSP, and BAG3—genes not previously associated with PPCM—establishing a genetic profile highly similar to dilated cardiomyopathy. Women with TTN variants presented with significantly lower LVEF (23.5% vs. 29%) but did not differ in rates of clinical recovery, timing of presentation, or prevalence of preeclampsia compared to those without variants.