The association of desmin with the αB-crystallin, and the fact that both the CRYAB p.R120G variant and DES variants lead to cardiac arrhythmias in mice (Jiao et al., 2014), and CRYAB variant p.D109G and DES variants lead to restrictive cardiomyopathy (Brodehl et al., 2017), suggest a potential compensatory interplay between the two in cardioprotection. Here, DES is linked to cardiac arrhythmia.