Extract
Professor Mark Kearney, the British Heart Foundation (BHF) Professor of Cardiovascular and Diabetes Research at the University of Leeds, is conducting work on preventing—and repairing— cardiovascular damage in people with diabetes who have coronary artery disease
It is a knowledge gap that continues to challenge cardiologists.
Despite receiving the best therapies, people with diabetes continue to have worse outcomes after a myocardial infarction (MI)—at a time that survival rates have improved overall for people who suffer an MI.
Professor Mark Kearney, BHF Professor of Cardiovascular and Diabetes Research at the University of Leeds, said: ‘What we are trying to do is to close that gap in our understanding in this area.’ His research towards that goal is focussing on preventing cardiovascular damage in patients with diabetes who have coronary artery disease, as well as aiming to trigger ways of repair and regeneration of the blood vessel wall.
Professor Kearney said: ‘If patients have got diabetes they are at least three times more likely to have a MI, and with diabetes are three times more likely to die within a year of the MI. Even if they survive that year but have some myocardial damage mortality at three years is probably about 30%, so the effects of diabetes on the heart and the vasculature is significant.’
