Are pathogenic intestinal bacteria present in stool specimens from patients with chronic heart failure?

It has been reported that patients with chronic heart failure exhibit an intestinal overgrowth of primary gut bacterial pathogens, such as Shigella spp., Salmonella spp., Campylobacter spp., and Yersinia enterocolitica. We failed to reproduce these findings in a cohort of 39 patients admitted to the hospital with decompensated heart failure by means of conventional stool bacterial cultures and a multiplexed polymerase chain reaction assay. (C) 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.