A new study revealed that type 2 diabetes changes the structure of the heart and energy systems in it directly, providing visions on the causes of increased risk of heart failure in diabetics even in the absence of a blockage in the arteries.
The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Sydney, Australia, and its results were published in the magazine “Embo Molecular Medicine” on August 4, and the Yurrick Alert website was written about.
Diabetes causes the body to harm the body silently over time, and the doctors noticed for decades the suffering of diabetics from the cases of heart failure more than others, but the exact cause of that remained unclear.
Dr. Benjamin Hunter and Dr. Sean Lal, from the Faculty of Medical Sciences from the University of Sydney in Australia, analyzed a donated human heart tissue from patients who underwent a heart transplant in Sydney, and they found that diabetes causes distinctive molecular changes in heart cells and in muscle structure, especially in patients with mysterious heart muscle, which is the most common cause of heart failure.
The results show that diabetes changes the way the heart is produced, and maintains its structure under pressure. The researchers, using advanced microscopic techniques, were able to monitor direct changes in the heart muscle as a result of the accumulation of fibrous tissues.
The high level of glucose can lead to the hardening of the proteins in the heart muscle, and with the passage of time it accumulates until minor changes, which reshapes the heart in ways that are difficult to discover until the appearance of symptoms.
For doctors, these results highlight the importance of cardiovascular monitoring early in diabetics.
“The research links heart disease and diabetes in ways that have not been discovered before humans, which provides new visions about possible treatment strategies that may benefit millions of people in Australia and around the world,” said Dr. Lal.
Access to the essence of the problem
The researchers examined the heart tissue from recipients to grow healthy organs and donors, and the study discovered that diabetes is not just a disease that accompanies heart disease, but rather that the heart failure is effectively aggravated by disrupting the main biological processes and reshaping the heart muscle at the microscopic level.
“The effect of the metabolic process of diabetes on the heart was not completely understood in humans,” Dr. Hunter said.
“A healthy heart is mainly used in the natural situation, in addition to glucose and ketones, as energy fuel. It was previously known that the absorption of glucose increases in cases of heart failure, but diabetes reduces the sensitivity of glucose vector, which is proteins that transmit glucose to and from cells, for insulin in the heart muscle cells.”
The researchers noted that diabetes increases the molecular properties of heart failure in heart patients in the advanced stages, and pressure on mitochondria, which is the center of energy generation in the cell.
The researchers also noticed a decrease in the production of structural proteins necessary to contract the heart muscle and deal with calcium in diabetics and ischy heart disease, as well as the accumulation of harsh fibrous heart tissue, which negatively affects the ability of the heart to pump blood.
Hunter explained that the RNA sequence confirms that many of these protein changes were also reflected in the level of genes, especially in the paths related to the process of energy metabolism and tissue structure, which enhances notes and other conclusions.
Once these evidence was obtained at the molecular level, the researchers managed to confirm these structural and plastic changes using a microscope.