Dubai: Heart functions and calcium transportation in cells are compromised in diabetics who have a diet high in sugar. This was demonstrated by a study conducted in the UAE with the support of a grant from the Shaikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Award for Medical Sciences.
The experiment was conducted on two diabetic rats. Elaborating on the experiment, Professor Chris Howarth, Project Supervisor and Chair of the Department of Physiology, College of Medical and Health Sciences at UAE University, said: “Two groups of diabetic and two groups of healthy rats were fed normal rat diet and either normal drinking water or water enriched with sugar for eight months. The diabetic and healthy rats provided with sucrose water had higher blood glucose, ate less and drank more than diabetic and healthy rats provided with normal drinking water.”
Howarth said that during the experiment it was discovered that the cardiac muscle cell contraction, in both diabetic and healthy rats fed on sucrose water, was reduced. Interestingly, intracellular calcium was increased in the healthy rats and decreased in diabetic rats fed on sucrose water. The expression of genes encoding a variety of cardiac muscle proteins was also altered in healthy and diabetic rats fed sucrose water. “Alterations in the pattern of gene expression may partly underlie disturbances in the mechanisms of calcium transport which, in turn, can have major effects on mechanical activity of the heart,” Howarth noted.
The results of these experiments provide valuable new insight into the ways diet can affect heart function, especially diabetic heart function.
Professor Sehamuddin Galadari, Chairman of the Medical Research Grant Committee for the award, pointed out the award incentive was in line with the general strategy of the UAE, which seeks to limit the spread of non-communicable diseases, including diabetes, heart disease, cardiovascular diseases, kidney diseases, cancers and respiratory diseases.
Galadari also appealed to the health institutions in the UAE to unify their efforts to raise awareness and promote protection against non-communicable diseases.
