Tumors: Too sweet to remember?

Statin-induced diabetes: too sweet a deal?

Bottom line Statins modestly increase blood glucose levels, which leads to 1 in 250 or so patients crossing the “diabetic threshold” in a 5-year period. Pre-existing elevated blood glucose levels, other diabetes risk factors, or higher statin doses might slightly increase the risk. This should not change statin prescribing, as statins reduce cardiovascular events and allcause mortality in appro...

When sweet becomes too sweet: Left ventricular longitudinal strain in focus

Getting too sweet: galectin-1 dysregulation in gestational diabetes mellitus.

Galectin-1 (gal-1) is a prototype carbohydrate-binding protein, whose dysregulation is associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes such as spontaneous abortion and pre-eclampsia. Furthermore, it is known that faulty gal-1 protein production or gene regulation can be caused by single-nucleotide polymorphisms in the LGALS1 gene. Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is also an adverse pregnancy outc...

The Diabetic Heart: Too Sweet for Its Own Good?

Diabetes mellitus is a major risk factor for ischemic heart disease (IHD). Patients with diabetes and IHD experience worse clinical outcomes, suggesting that the diabetic heart may be more susceptible to ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI). In contrast, the animal data suggests that the diabetic heart may be either more, equally, or even less susceptible to IRI. The conflicting animal data may be...

Acid to remember

Antibodies against a vaccine vector render T cells more susceptible to HIV-1 infection, say Perreau et al. on page 2717. Their results may help explain the failure of a recent HIV vaccine trial. The HIV-1 vaccine used in Merck's STEP trial relied on a weakened form of a common cold virus, Adenovirus 5 (Ad5), to carry bits of HIV into the body. One worry about the Ad5 vector was that widespread ...