Research Team Finds Cardiac Complications are the Leading Cause of Death Among Diabetics

A research team from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston in collaboration with Baylor College of Medicine, University of California San Diego and the University of Texas at Dallas have published their findings the journal Cell Reports.

People with diabetes have a two to five time higher risk of developing cardiovascular diseases. For decades physicians have noticed unhealthy changes in the hearts of diabetics called diabetic cardiomyopathy, which is a disorder of the heart muscle that can lead to heart failure.

The molecular mechanisms responsible for this cardiac disorder are poorly understood, although they are key to revealing new targets for the discovery of better treatments and development of more accurate diagnostics.

RNA provides the blueprint for making the protein building blocks of cells. The RNA is cut or spliced to generate mRNA used to build proteins. RNA splicing mistakes are associated with many human diseases because they lead to production of the wrong or harmful proteins.

The research team has previously shown that splicing is incorrectly regulated and levels of the splicing regulator RBFOX2 are elevated in diabetic heart tissue. The current study sought to further investigate how RBFOX2 regulation contributes to splicing defects seen in diabetic hearts and the consequences of splicing changes on cardiac function.

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