doi: 10.1161/01.RES.0000303937.73170.31
© 2008 American Heart Association, Inc.
Editorials |
Sweet and Sour
Unraveling Diabetic Vascular Disease
From Cardiology, CardioVascular Center, University Hospital, Zurich; and Cardiovascular Research, Institute of Physiology, University of Zurich, Switzerland.
Correspondence to Thomas F. Lüscher, MD, FRCP, FESC, Professor and Chairman of Cardiology and Head of Cardiovascular Research, University Hospital Zürich, Rämistrasse 100, CH-8091 Zürich, Switzerland. E-mail cardiotfl@gmx.ch
See related article, pages 95–102
Key Words: diabetes mellitus • reactive oxygen species • nitric oxide • endothelial function
An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract. |
Diabetes is the epidemic of the 21st century.1 Rare in the past, diabetes has grown into an increasingly common disease both in developed countries and most recently also in the third world. The most important factor for this unforeseen trend appears to be the increase in body weight around the world attributable to the changes in lifestyle over the last decades.2 It is likely that the increasing prevalence of diabetes will greatly affect the cardiovascular disease burden in the future. Although the morbidity and mortality of cardiovascular disease has fallen over the last 3 decades, this trend may flatten or even reverse.
Thus, a better understanding of the consequences of diabetes in the vasculature and the heart is of great importance. Indeed, diabetes markedly affects the function of the cardiovascular system, both in the microcirculation as well as in large conduit arteries supplying vital organs such as the heart, brain and kidney.3 As a consequence, diabetes surpasses other conditions such as dyslipidemia and hypertension as a risk predictor for myocardial infarction, stroke, and renal failure4; in fact, because of its severe prognosis, diabetes may be considered the cancer of the vasculature.
For vascular homeostasis, endothelial cells are of utmost importance.5 Indeed, these cells produce a variety of mediators, surface proteins, and autocoids involved in vasomotion, coagulation, and inflammation. In humans and animal models of diabetes in vivo as well as in endothelial cells in culture exposed to high glucose concentrations, marked functional changes are observed.3 A major mediator of
Related Article:
Circ. Res. 2008 102: 95-102.