A biased search of inflammation-related genes returned five cytokines and chemokines that were differentially expressed among all three cardiomyocyte infection conditions, namely Gdf-15, Cxcl10, Cxcl2, Il-6 and Tnf. The expression levels of these inflammatory cytokines were significantly higher in the three cardiomyocyte infection conditions compared to the non-infected control: Colombian strain P = 0.0024, Y strain P = 0.001 and Tulahuen strain P = 0.0014 (Fig. 8). Here, GDF15 is linked to infection.