Vera Schrauwen-Hinderling1, Ruth Meex1,
Jan Glatz1, Joachim Wildberger1, Hildo Lamb2,
Michael Schr3,4, Matthijs Hesselink1, Patrick Schrauwen1,
Marianne Eline Kooi1
1Maastricht University Medical Center,
Maastricht, Netherlands; 2Leiden University Medical Center,
Leiden, Netherlands; 3Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, United
States; 4Philips Health Care, Cleveland, United States
Excessive
cardiac lipid storage might hamper cardiac function via lipotoxic pathways.
We investigated the response of cardiac lipids to exercise training in
patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Maximal whole body oxygen uptake and
LV-ejection fraction (by CINE-MRI) were improved while cardiac lipid content
(by 1H-MRS) was unchanged after training. This is in contrast to our earlier
findings in healthy overweight subjects, where such a training intervention
diminished cardiac lipid content. This may indicate hampered exercise-induced
lipid mobilization in the diabetic heart and reveals that reduction of
cardiac lipids is not a prerequisite for the training-induced improvement in
cardiac function.