ABSTRACT
Glomerulonephritis and rheumatic heart disease are usually inferred as immune complex disease caused by infections, but the pathogenesis of rheumatic heart disease is still not clear. In this experiment, we infected 38 rabbits with cercariae of S. japonicum and de-monstrated the histopathological changes of endocarditis, myocarditis and perivasculitis in the heart tissues of 33(86.8%) infected rabbits. Thrombosis was also found in heare vessels, but adult schistosomes or eggs were not found in the heart tissues. Direct and ndirect immune enzyme staining studies showed the presence of schistosome-specific antigenst and host antibodies in the heart tissues, suggesting that the histopathological changes in ithe infected rabbit hearts were resulted from the deposition of immune complexes and th secondary events pf host autoimmune reactions. In this paper, correlative clinical cases were reviewed and the possibility of heart disease in human schistosomiasis caused by immune mechanism was discussed. We hope that the above findings might broaden our understanding of the pathogenesis of rheumatic heart disease, myocardiopathy and cardio-vascular diseases (Plates 1-3).