ABSTRACT
Drugs may induce cardiotoxicity that can progress to heart failure in human patients without existing cardiovascular disease or may precipitate the occurrence and progression of heart failure in patients with preexisting cardiac disease (Butany et al., 2009; Feenstra et al., 1999). Between 1994 and 2006, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) assigned black-box warnings to 40 drugs due to cardiotoxicity. Seventeen (45%) of the 38 drugs were removed from the market following approval due to cardiotoxic (Dykens and Will, 2007). The focus of this chapter is the assessment of cardiotoxicity in swine used in biomedical research. Veterinary medical diagnostic laboratories have routinely evaluated swine that may have been exposed to cardiotoxins in the agricultural setting
(Van Gelder et al., 1972). An overview of the observations of spontaneous cardiotoxicity will facilitate the development of pattern recognition for lesions that may occur in minipigs used for biomedical research in the development of pharmaceuticals and biotherapeutics. References to the comparative similarities and translatability of cardiovascular pathophysiology in minipig and man are given in Chapter 31 of this monograph.
