Intracellular Ca2+ release and reuptake are necessary for normal contraction and relaxation of the human heart. Intracellular Ca2+ transients were recorded with aequorin during isometric contraction of myocardium from patients with end-stage heart failure. In contrast to controls, contractions and Ca2+ transients of muscles from failing hearts were markedly prolonged, and the Ca2+ transients exhibited two distinct components. Muscles from the failing hearts showed a diminished capacity to restore a low resting Ca2+ level during diastole. These data obtained in actively contracting human myocardium suggest that intracellular Ca2+ handling is abnormal and might cause both systolic and diastolic dysfunction in heart failure. The inotropic effectiveness of drugs that act to increase intracellular levels of cyclic adenosine monophosphate (AMP), such as beta-adrenergic agonists and phosphodiesterase inhibitors, was markedly reduced in muscles from patients with heart failure. In contrast, the effectiveness of inotropic stimulation with drugs that act by cyclic AMP-independent mechanisms, such as the cardiotonic steroids and DPI 201-106, were preserved. Stimulation of intracellular cyclic AMP production by the adenylate cyclase activator forskolin restored the inotropic response to phosphodiesterase inhibitors. These studies indicate that an abnormality in cyclic AMP production may be a fundamental defect in patients with end-stage heart failure that may markedly diminish the effectiveness of agents that depend on generation of this nucleotide for a positive inotropic effect. Moreover, deficient production of cyclic AMP seems, at least in part, to account for the reversal of the force-frequency relation that characterizes failing myocardium. Of interest, direct measurement of total cellular cyclic AMP content and protein kinase activity did not reveal significant differences between the control and myopathic tissue, suggesting the presence in human ventricular muscle of physiologically distinct compartmentalized pools of cyclic AMP. Finally, changes in the sensitivity of the contractile apparatus to Ca2+ also seem to play an important role in the differential responsiveness to drugs of myopathic versus normal human myocardium.