of the American Heart Association Council on Basic Cardiovascular Sciences, Council on Clinical Cardiology, and Council on Functional Genomics and Translational Biology

Heart failure (HF) is a leading cause of morbidity andmortality in the United States. Despite a number of important therapeutic advances for the treatment of symptom-atic HF,1 the prevalence, mortality, and cost associated with HF continue to grow in the United States and other developed countries. Given the aging of our population and the preva-lence of diseases such as diabetes mellitus and hypertension that predispose patients to this syndrome, it is possible that HF prevalence will increase in the next decade. Current treatments primarily slow the progression of this syndrome, and there is a need to develop novel preventative and reparative therapies. Development of these novel HF thera-pies requires testing of the putative therapeutic strategies in appropriate HF animal models. The purposes of this scientific statement are to define the distinctive clinical features of the major causes of HF i