This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on ISI (1)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related letter  • Related article  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Psychiatry  • Women's Health, Other  • Congestive Heart Failure/ Cardiomyopathy  • Alert me on articles by topic

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 111 words of the full text and any section headings.

To the Editor: In their Research Letter on the impact of earthquakes on Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, Dr Watanabe and colleagues¹ present new evidence that a sufficiently strong stressor can elicit this syndrome in predisposed patients. In contrast to previous reports, the trigger was a natural catastrophe, and therefore a mass event rather than a private life event such as the death of a relative, an argument, or financial loss.^2-3

Takotsubo cardiomyopathy as a response to these personal types of events typically affects women and only rarely men. It would be interesting to know if the sex distribution associated with a mass event such as an earthquake is similar.

Financial Disclosures: None reported.

Tomaso Gnecchi-Ruscone, MD
tomasognecchi@tiscali.it
Department of Cardiology
Ospedale di Merate
Merate, Lecco, Italy

1. Watanabe H, Kodama M, Aizawa Y, et al. Impact of earthquakes on Takotsubo cardiomyopathy. JAMA. 2005;294:305-306. FREE FULL TEXT 2. Wittstein IS, Thiemann DR, Lima JA, et al. Neurohumoral features of myocardial stunning due to sudden emotional stress. N Engl J Med. 2005;352:539-548. FREE FULL TEXT 3. Sharkey SW, Lesser JR, Zenovich AG, et al. Acute and reversible cardiomyopathy provoked by stress in women from the United States. Circulation. 2005;111:472-479. FREE FULL TEXT

Letters Section Editor: Robert M. Golub, MD, Senior Editor.

JAMA. 2005;294:2169.

RELATED LETTER

Impact of Earthquakes on Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy
Hiroshi Watanabe, Makoto Kodama, Yuji Okura, Yoshifusa Aizawa, Naohito Tanabe, Masaomi Chinushi, Yuichi Nakamura, Tsuneo Nagai, Masahito Sato, and Masaaki Okabe
JAMA. 2005;294(3):305-307.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

RELATED ARTICLE

Earthquakes and Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy—Reply
Hiroshi Watanabe, Makoto Kodama, Yoshifusa Aizawa, and Naohito Tanabe
JAMA. 2005;294(17):2169-2170.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT