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Increased Heart Attack Mortality in Diabetics
– Reported February 19, 2013
(Ivanhoe Newswire) — Each year over one million people in the United States have a heart attack and close to half of them die. New research suggests that diabetic patients are more than twice as likely to die from a heart attack as non-diabetic patients and it could be linked to protein oxidation.
High levels of the oxidized form of the protein CamKII is linked to an increase risk of sudden death after a heart attack. Hearts from diabetic patients has a significant amount of CamKII compared to non-diabetic patients hearts.
Researchers at the University of Iowa used a diabetic mouse model to determine if CamKII was a component of the molecular pathway that increases heart attack-related deaths in diabetics.
The mouse model was engineered to express a form of CamKII that cannot be oxidized in the heart. Min Luo and colleagues discovered that diabetic mice expressed the non-oxidizable form of CamKII were less likely to die after a heart attack, compared to mice that expressed normal CamKII.
Scientists say that these findings suggest that CamKII may increase post-heart attack mortality in diabetic patients. Also, it could indicate therapies that reduce oxidation of CamKII could be useful in treating diabetic patients who suffer from cardiovascular disease.
SOURCE: Journal of Clinical Investigation, February 2013
