Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Everyone is aware of the impact heart attacks have on people's quality of life, and ultimately that death due to heart failure is an all too common event. This is particularly true in people who have obesity and/or diabetes. We now understand much about the complexity of the heart, its structure and how it functions. This has also allowed researchers to identify things which change in the heart before a heart attack to cause this event. The changes which occur even after heart attack that cause failure of the heart are also now quite well characterized. You may see these changes referred to as "cardiac remodeling". Basically, they involve: 1. changes in the ability of the heart to use nutrients to produce energy (energy production becomes less efficient). 2. change in the size of the heart (the size of heart cells initially increases). 3. change in the number of heart cells decreases (normally these 'muscular' cells work together to cause contraction: less number of cells means less force) and 4. a change in the balance between elasticity and stiffness of the beating heart (mainly due to changes in the 'scaffold' that normally supports the heart). Exactly why these various changes occur in people with obesity and/or diabetes has still to be fully understood. Only when we know these details will more effective therapies be developed. The research conducted in my host laboratory, and their partnership with various colleagues worldwide, is designed to understand what causes changes in the structure and function of the heart in individuals with obesity and/or diabetes.