Theileriosis and cardiac biomarkers: An update

Theileriosis is an important tick-borne disease, causing widespread alteration in physical, haemato-biochemical, electrocardiographic, and cardiac biomarkers parameters. Involvement of the myocardium in theileriosis is a common phenomenon and is commonly ignored under field conditions due to the lack of proper knowledge about the pathophysiology of the disease. It is believed that anemic hypoxia and acidbase and electrolyte derangements may lead to disturbance in myocardial cell membrane integrity, which is clinically manifested as an alteration in cardiac-specific biomarkers. Alteration in cardiac-specific biomarkers reflects the involvement of the myocardium in the pathophysiology of theileriosis. Troponins are highly conserved polypeptides with three isoforms, one of which is cardiac troponin-I (cTn-I). The cTn-I is uniquely expressed in the myocardium and is a very sensitive serum biomarker of physical or metabolic myocardial damage with high specificity. An increase in serum creatinine kinase isozyme (CK-MB) activity is generally related to damage of the myocardium and skeletal muscles. Evaluation of CK-MB levels has also been a good biomarker for the enzymatic diagnosis of acute cardiac injury. Altered levels of cardiac-specific biomarkers may act as an alarm to use cardioprotective drugs along with conventional treatment protocols for better prognosis in haemoprotozoan disease including theileriosis.