Human influenza A virus causes myocardial and cardiac-specific conduction system infections associated with early inflammation and premature death.

Aims: Human influenza A virus (hIAV) infection is associated with important cardiovascular complications, although cardiac infection pathophysiology is poorly understood. We aimed to study the ability of hIAV of different pathogenicity to infect the mouse heart, and establish the relationship between the infective capacity and the associated in vivo, cellular and molecular alterations.

Methods And Results: We evaluated lung and heart viral titres in mice infected with either one of several hIAV strains inoculated intranasally.