The incidence and prevalence of diabetes mellitus are both increasing rapidly in societies around the globe. The majority of patients with diabetes succumb ultimately to heart disease, much of which stems from atherosclerotic disease and hypertension. However, the diabetic milieu is itself intrinsically noxious to the heart, and cardiomyopathy can develop independent of elevated blood pressure ...

Diastolic dysfunction suggestive of diabetic cardiomyopathy is established in children with T1DM, but its pathogenesis is not well understood. We studied the relationships of systemic inflammatory cytokines/chemokines and cardiac function in 17 children with T1DM during and after correction of diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA). Twenty seven of the 39 measured cytokines/chemokines were elevated at 6-1...

OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to examine the association of diabetic retinopathy with incident heart failure (HF). BACKGROUND Microvascular disease might play a more prominent role in the pathogenesis of diabetic cardiomyopathy, a major cause of HF in diabetes. Whether diabetic retinopathy, a microvascular complication of diabetes, predicts HF is unclear. METHODS A population-bas...

OBJECTIVES Diabetic cardiomyopathy (DCM) is characterized as a coronary heart disease which expands during diabetes due to alterations in the myocardial function and structure. The currentstudy intends to elucidate the protective effect of gingerol on DCM in a streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetes mellitus (DM) rat model. MATERIALS AND METHODS In this experimental study, the animals were divi...

The development of late gadolinium enhancement imaging (LGE) in the late 1990s revolutionized the clinical application of cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) in ischemic and nonischemic cardiomyopathies (1). Not only has the identification of even small subendocardial myocardial infarcts become possible due to the unsurpassed spatial resolution of the technique, but also specific patterns o...

Diabetic cardiomyopathy (DCM) has been increasingly considered as a main cause of heart failure and death in diabetic patients. At present, no effective treatment exists to prevent its development. In the present study, we describe the potential protective effects and mechanisms of myricitrin (Myr) on the cardiac function of streptozotosin-induced diabetic mice and on advanced glycation end pro...

Cardiac Complications To the Editor: We read with great interest the article by Hsueh et al in a recent edition of Circulation Research.1 We concur with the efforts of the Animal Models of Diabetic Complications Consortium (AMDCC) to attempt to create clinically relevant models of diabetes induced cardiovascular disease. Like the AMDCC, our own group has studied extensively diabetic complicatio...

Our understanding of the cardiovascular system has evolved through the years by extensive studies emphasizing the identification of the molecular and physiological mechanisms involved in its normal function and disease pathogenesis. Major discoveries have been made along the way. However, the majority of this work has focused on specific genes or pathways rather than integrative approaches. In ...

OBJECTIVES To report the rates of cardiomyopathies in the population below 50 years of age in Qatar. SUBJECTS AND METHODS We conducted a retrospective review of clinical data on patients with cardiomyopathy who were hospitalized in Hamad General Hospital, Doha. Data were collected from medical records during the 1996-2002 period and prospectively from the patients who were hospitalized during...

Since the advent of insulin, the improvements in diabetes detection and the therapies to treat hyperglycemia have reduced the mortality of acute metabolic emergencies, such that today chronic complications are the major cause of morbidity and mortality among diabetic patients. More than half of the mortality that is seen in the diabetic population can be ascribed to cardiovascular disease (CVD)...