Widely used murine models of adrenergic-induced cardiomyopathy offer little insight into electrical derangements seen in human heart failure owing to profound differences in the characteristics of ventricular repolarization in mice and rats compared with humans. We therefore sought to determine whether sustained adrenergic activation may produce a clinically relevant heart failure phenotype in the guinea-pig, an animal species whose ventricular action potential shape and restitution properties resemble those determined in humans. Isoprenaline (ISO), a ß-adrenoceptor agonist, was infused at variable dosage and duration using either subcutaneously implanted osmotic minipumps or daily injections, in an attempt to establish the relevant treatment protocol. We found that 3 months of daily ISO injections (final dose of 1 mg kg(-1), i.p.) promote heart failure evidenced by cardiac hypertrophy [increased cardiac weights, left ventricular (LV) posterior wall thickness, myocyte cross-sectional area and LV protein content], cardiac dilatation (increased LV internal diameters), basal systolic dysfunction (reduced LV fractional shortening determined by echocardiography and flattened LV systolic pressure-volume and stress-strain relationships assessed in isolated, perfused heart preparations), reduced contractile reserve in the presence of acute ß-adrenoceptor stimulation, and pulmonary oedema (increased lung weights). These changes were associated with prolongation of LV epicardial action potential, effective refractory period and QT interval, an upward shift of the electrical restitution curve determined over a wide range of diastolic intervals, and reduced maximal restitution slope. The physiological right ventricular-to-LV difference in action potential duration was eliminated in ISO-treated hearts, thereby contributing to impaired activation-to-repolarization coupling and reversed right ventricular-to-LV difference in repolarization time. In summary, we establish the guinea-pig model of ISO-induced cardiomyopathy, which enables the correlation of detrimental structural and contractile changes with repolarization abnormalities typically seen in human heart failure.