Funding outcome

Diabetes is a disease of poor blood sugar control, though people with diabetes do not die from poor blood sugar control, but rather heart disease (e.g. heart attack). Although diabetes increases the risk for heart disease in both men and women, this increased risk is greater in women. Unfortunately, human studies of heart disease often include less women than men (~25% women participants), and this proportion is even worse in animal studies, where animal studies of diabetes or heart disease often only use male animals, in order to save money. Making matters worse, most animal models mimicking diabetes do not cause real heart disease unless the animal is genetically modified. This does not represent humans with diabetes and heart disease, where poor dieting and/or reduced physical activity are major factors causing their health problems. Due to animals not accurately representing humans in these studies, our lab has characterized a mouse model of diabetes due to poor dieting (eating too much) that does cause heart disease. Because diabetes-related heart disease is more frequently seen in women, the goal of our research is to identify molecular signatures that may segregate female from male mice using this model, to better understand ways to treat diabetic heart disease in women. In addition, we plan to test whether inducing menopause in mice can exacerbate diabetic heart disease in female mice. Taken together, we believe the successful completion of our research will result in the characterization of a valuable mouse model that can be used to study heart disease in women with diabetes, and therefore lead to female-tailored drugs for treating these individuals.