Abnormal fat metabolism underlies heart problems in diabeti...(breakdown of cardiolipin. Recently Gros...)

Date:8/13/2007

breakdown of cardiolipin.

Recently, Gross and his colleague David Mancuso, Ph.D., member of the division, found that mice engineered to produce too much of this enzyme in their hearts developed defects in mitochondrial function which became worse when they were fasted a condition that, like diabetes, causes the heart to use lipids for fuel. A 16-hour fast caused significant problems with the mouse hearts' ability to pump blood, again implicating altered lipid metabolism, cardiolipin scarcity and mitochondrial impairment in heart disease using lipid as predominant fuel.

Gross adds that in addition to the effects on mitochondria, many of the membranes in heart cells, which are built from fatty molecules, are also adversely affected by the diabetic heart's abnormal lipid metabolism. Furthermore, because fatty molecules are part of cells' signaling mechanisms, numerous aspects of cellular physiology become altered.

"The pieces of the puzzle of diabetic heart disease are now rapidly falling into place," Gross says. "By exploiting the novel technology of shotgun lipidomics, we have identified the increased activation of certain lipid-digesting enzymes and the decrease of cardiolipin as central aspects of this disorder. We hope that these kinds of studies will enable physicians to diagnose diabetic cardiovascular disease sooner and treat it earlier."
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Contact: Gwen Ericson 314-286-0141 Washington University School of Medicine Source:Eurekalert

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