Novel therapy saves patient with severe heart inflammation (Jakafi)

Medical Xpress / University of California, San Francisco / Circulation ^ | June 23, 2025 | Melinda Krigel / Juan Qin et al

[ConservativeMind]

Acute myocarditis—sudden inflammation of the heart—causes mild symptoms in most cases, but about 10% of acute myocarditis cases can be sudden and severe.

Now a team is using a new class of drugs that target inflammation to treat acute fulminant myocarditis patients.

"Our group has developed several animal models of myocarditis and we became interested in a group of enzymes called Janus kinases (JAKs) that seem to serve as communication nodes between immune cells," said Javid Moslehi, MD. "JAKs become hyperactive during acute heart inflammation, exacerbating the already activated immune system."

Moslehi and his team therefore reasoned that targeting these enzymes using a novel class of therapies called JAK inhibitors would be a possible treatment. In recent years, the team has examined the effects of JAK inhibitor treatment, showing acute benefit in various laboratory models of myocarditis.

In the current case, the group treated a 20-year-old woman who came to UCSF with acute fulminant myocarditis.

"This patient's heart was effectively falling apart and there was no time to lose," said Connor O'Brien, MD. "We put the patient on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) to maintain blood flow and started the process of listing her for heart transplantation."

O'Brien was on clinical service at the time, caring for the patient. The medical team had tried using corticosteroids as a treatment but without success.

O'Brien added ruxolitinib, a JAK inhibitor, to the treatment strategy. The patient's cardiac arrhythmias slowed down and her cardiac enzyme—a measure of heart damage—decreased. Over the next few days, her heart function improved dramatically, allowing her to wean off ECMO support. She was successfully discharged from the hospital one week later.

Since that time, the cardiology team has gone on to successfully treat other patients with JAK inhibitors for acute myocarditis, but Moslehi adds a note of caution.

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TOPICS: Health/Medicine
KEYWORDS: myocarditis

[ConservativeMind]

Heart function in patients with acute fulminant myocarditis “improved dramatically” using a JAK inhibitor, ruxolitinib (Jakafi).

[ConservativeMind]

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