Cardiovascular Complications of Diabetes

Dear Colleagues,

There are three main elements to diabetes mellitus—the immunology of Type 1 diabetes, the dysmetabolic state of Type 2 diabetes, and the cardiovascular complications of diabetes. The vascular diseases of diabetes are known as microvascular and macrovascular disease. Microvascular disease occurs as retinopathy, neuropathy, and nephropathy, and macrovascular disease as atherosclerosis underlying strokes and heart attacks. There is very strong evidence that hyperglycaemia drives microvascular disease and attenuating hyperglycaemia prevents microvascular disease. However, the role of hyperglycaemia in driving macrovascular disease has been controversial. There is also a therapeutic dilemma—it does not follow automatically that if a risk factor causes disease, treating the risk factor reverses or prevents the disease, possibly because of a mismatch between the mechanism causing and mode of action of the pharmacological agent in reversing the risk factor, in this case hyperglycaemia. Insulin resistance also plays a major role in Type 2 and possibly Type 1 diabetes, and discerning the biochemical mechanism of insulin resistance has proven to be a very difficult undertaking. Whereas early agents did not prevent cardiovascular deaths from diabetes, the landscape has changed dramatically in recent years where several new classes of agents, notably sodium–glucose co-transporter 2 inhibitors (SGLT2i), can prevent diabetes-associated events and deaths in clinical trials and the community. Most recently, there has been an emerging body of work related to the actions of natural products in preventing hyperglycaemia in an array of animal models; most of these are speculated to be due to anti-oxidative mechanisms, but no real targets have emerged that can be taken further to a new therapeutic agent for clinical use.

In this context, we seek experimental papers at the cellular, animal model or clinical level and insightful reviews, which:

• Define the mechanisms through which hyperglycaemia and insulin resistance cause cardiovascular diseases;
• Examine mechanisms and pathways for preventing hyperglycaemia and cardiovascular disease;
• Provide new insights into the role of natural products in protecting against the cardiovascular complications of diabetes;
• Define the efficacy of new and emerging anti-hyperglycaemic medicines in preventing diabetes-associated cardiovascular disease.

Prof. Dr. Peter J. Little
Dr. Danielle Kamato
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Molecular Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. There is an Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal. For details about the APC please see here. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.