1.2. Rationale for the current study Cardiac autoantibody titers are generally elevated in patients after myocardial infarction or suffering from systolic heart failure. In addition, we found experimental evidence for a critical role of AngII signaling in the development of cardiac fibrosis. We hypothesize that auto-immunological effects in general, and Anti-AGTR1-Ab, Anti- ETAR-Ab and auto-reactive T-cells in particular, are important and so far widely underestimated in the pathogenesis of cardiomyopathies and that they interfere with evidence based treatment approaches.