Molecular Aspects of Diabetic Heart

Abstract

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is characterised by hyperglycemia due to disturbances in the metabolism of carbohydrate, fat and protein because of abnormalities in the availability of insulin or insulin-action. The secondary complications seen in diabetic patients are found to involve alterations in vascular basement membrane composition as well as accumulation of glucose derived reaction products due to over utilization of glucose in insulin independent tissue (Sprio, 1976). The proteins of the myocardium are the most important part of the socalled myofilaments whose unit is the sarcomere (Solaro and Rarick 1998). The concentration of serum lipids – total cholesterol (TC), low density and high density lipoproteins (LDL & HDL) and triglyceride (TG) is another important index of overall metabolic control in diabetic patients and should be measured at diagnosis and regularly thereafter (Frier and Fisher, 2006).