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Published online 22 June 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.588

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Heart study questions diabetes drugs

A molecular pathway could explain how a class of drugs leads to heart failure.

Charlotte Schubert

Researchers who study how tumours balloon in size have discovered one way that enlargement of the heart can lead to heart failure. The work, although mostly done in mice, could help explain why a class of diabetes drugs called thiazolidinediones (TZDs) increase the risk of heart failure.

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  • Could it be that patients who experience cardiovascular events when taking rosiglitazone already have some sort of underlying heart condition? Maybe atrial defibrillation or damaged heart valves or condition like these can predispose some people to cardiovascular event when treated with rosiglitazone.

    • 23 Jun, 2009
    • Posted by: Michael Buratovich

  • The physician-scientists I talked to for this article, such as Semenkovich quoted here, said that when it comes to heart failure TZDs are primarily a concern for people who already have symptoms. That dovetails with the new findings in Cell Metabolism?PPAR?, the target of TZDs, is not normally expressed at high levels in the heart. Its expression is bumped up in people with heart failure, and in mouse models of the condition. Charlotte Schubert

    • 24 Jun, 2009
    • Posted by: Charlotte Schubert