Heart attack risk: diabetes damages heart vessels

Christiane Fux studied journalism and psychology in Hamburg. The experienced medical editor has been writing magazine articles, news and factual texts on all conceivable health topics since 2001. In addition to her work for, Christiane Fux is also active in prose. Her first crime novel was published in 2012, and she also writes, designs and publishes her own crime plays.

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People with diabetes are more likely to have heart attacks. The high sugar levels damage the fine blood vessels in the heart. The entire pumping organ suffers from this in the long term.

Researchers led by Christian Kupatt and Rabea Hinkel from the Technical University of Munich came to this conclusion when they compared the coronary arteries of transplant patients with and without diabetes. In diabetics, the number of small vessels around the heart was significantly reduced.

Destroyed protective layer

The scientists also found out the reason for this: When the blood sugar level is high, the so-called pericytes are broken down. “These cells normally form a layer that surrounds the small blood vessels,” explains Hinkel.

The researchers assume that the pericytes stabilize the veins. "If the layer is attacked, the entire vessel becomes unstable and eventually dissolves," says Hinkel.Experiments with animals have confirmed that the number of small coronary arteries does indeed gradually decrease in untreated diabetes.

Congested main roads

The small and large coronary vessels have the important task of supplying the heart muscle with blood. Similar to a road network, there are also main traffic routes - the large arteries - but also smaller and smallest secondary roads, the small veins.

If one of the small veins fails, it has little effect on the blood flow. However, if more and more disappear, the large vessels are overloaded. In the worst case, this can lead to the collapse of the entire system - the result: a heart attack.

"That shows once again how important it is to detect diabetes early," says Hinkel. In fact, diabetes often goes undetected for years or even decades. “Extreme damage can occur in this long period,” warns the scientist.

Gene therapy lets vessels sprout

However, the disappearance of the small blood vessels is not irreversible. At least in animal experiments, the researchers succeeded in growing functional veins again.

However, a gene therapy intervention was necessary for this. It caused the heart cells to produce more of the thymosin beta 4 molecule. Among other things, this protein ensures that the protective pericytes are formed in greater numbers. However, there is still a long way to go before such a therapy can be used in humans.

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