EPO and myocardial infarction: We then proceeded to test gated FDG-PET for longitudinal monitoring in mice with CVB3-induced DCM after erythropoietin (EPO) treatment, based upon previous reports of its cardioprotective properties in preclinical models of myocardial infarction [13,14] as well as in rats with autoimmune-induced myocarditis [15,16].