Abstract:
During the last 20 years the number of people with diabetes worldwide has risen from 30 million to 230 million, according to the International Diabetes Federation. The disease is expected to affect 380 million people worldwide by 2025. End stage diabetes is always associated with heart complications, which is the leading cause of death in diabetic patients. The usual characteristics of diabetic heart failure are left ventricular dysfunction, myocyte hypertrophy, interstitial fibrosis and fatty acid depletion (1). Streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetic rats have been used as a model for diabetic cardiac dysfunction (2), although the mechanisms leading to diabetic heart failure remain uncertain. In this study, we investigated cardiac function and myocardial fat content in STZ-rats over an extended period of time using High Field MRI. We used MRI cine images to calculate cardiac function and Dixon images to calculate cardiac fat volume. We hypothesized that cardiac fat composition could be a useful biomarker for diabetic heart failure in this animal model.