Researchers at Sant Pau de Barcelona have identified a new non -invasive biomarker of epicardial fat in patients with type 1 diabetes.
The research, published by the magazine 'Scientific Reports', have been carried out by researchers from the group of lipids and cardiovascular pathology at the Center for Biomedical Research in Cardiovascular Diseases (CIBERCV) of the Department of Endocrinology of the Cardiac Image Unit andof the cardiovascular biochemistry group at the Sant Pau hospital.
The work has shown that the circulating levels of the soluble form of the LRP1 protein (SLRP1) are associated with the volume of epicardial fat in patients with type 1 diabetes, so the researchers propose SLRP1 as an epicardic fat biomarker in this disease.
"Promoting tests based on this protein can open the way to new clinical tools for the stratification of metabolic risk in patients with type 1 diabetes," said researchers Vicenta Llorente (CIBERCV) and Antonio Pérez, from the cyber of diabetes and associated metabolic diseases, which has collaborated in the investigation.
Type 1 diabetes patients have a high content of epicardial fat, a metabolically active tissue that is intimately related to heart alterations.
"The quantification of the extension of the epicardical fat has a great clinical interest, but its evaluation through image techniques has obvious economic and practical limitations," said the researchers of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) David de Gonzalo and Vicenta Llorente, which see "fundamental" find new non -invasive biomarkers that reflect the epicardical fat content.
Cardiovascular disease is the main cause of death in patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus and the relative risk of coronary arterial pain is ten times greater than that of healthy people, especially in women.