ITGB1BP2 and familial dilated cardiomyopathy: With the aim of verifying the hypothesis of a potential role of the Melusin encoding gene, ITGB1BP2, in the modification of the clinical phenotype of human cardiomyopathies, we screened the entire coding region of ITGB1BP2 gene (Xq12-q13) and the intronic flanking regions looking for genetic variations possibly associated to the pathological phenotype in three selected groups of patients affected by hypertension and dilated (DCM) or hypertrophic (HCM) cardiomyopathy.