Early Cardiac MRI markers of diabetic cardiomyopathy (CMR-DC)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A retrospective analysis of cardiac magnetic resonance images to identify early markers of diabetic cardiomyopathy in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus.
IRAS ID
190151
Contact name
Gerry McCann
Contact email
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 6 months, 1 days
Research summary
Research has shown that diabetes on its own is a risk factor for heart failure (HF) and patients with diabetes are at risk of developing a distinct condition called ‘diabetic cardiomyopathy’. Moreover, those patients with both diabetes and HF do much worse than patients with just HF on its own. For this reason the National Diabetes Audit has recommended that the prevention, detection and treatment of HF be a priority for diabetes services in the UK.
Researchers have been focussing on diagnosing diabetic cardiomyopathy early, before people develop HF, so that the condition can be treated as soon as possible. In our centre cardiac MRI (CMR) studies have shown that, in young adults (<40 years of age) with type 2 diabetes and no clinical features of HF, there are specific changes that occur in the diabetic heart compared with non-diabetic hearts. These are likely to represent the earliest markers of heart dysfunction in diabetes, albeit in patients with an extreme form of diabetes. Whether the same CMR findings are evident in older patients with type 2 diabetes, remains to be established. It is this question that we will address in our research.
CMR images from 100 patients (50 with type 2 diabetes and 50 without diabetes) will be analysed from a database of pictures that have already been taken. CMR scans will be from those patients referred for investigation of symptoms of angina and/or breathlessness. Our aim is to identify whether those CMR changes of heart failure, which we have seen in young patients with type 2 diabetes, also occur in older patients with diabetes. We will use this information to decide how many people we will need to recruit for a study in the future, looking at diabetic heart disease.
REC name
North West - Greater Manchester East Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/NW/0942
Date of REC Opinion
30 Nov 2015
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion