Other investigations have demonstrated that genetic mouse models carrying mutant genes identified in patients with LVNC, such as TNNT2 (Luedde et al., 2010) and ZASP/Cypher (Vatta et al., 2003; Zheng et al., 2009), present typical morphological characteristics associated with DCM but lack the clinical phenotype characteristic of LVNC, and these findings are consistent with the results of our study. Here, TNNT2 is linked to familial dilated cardiomyopathy.