Evidence for human diabetic cardiomyopathy

Growing interest has been accumulated in the definition of worsening effects of diabetes in the cardiovascular system. This is associated with epidemiological data regarding the high incidence of heart failure (HF) in diabetic patients. To investigate the detrimental effects both of hyperglycemia and insulin resistance, a lot of preclinical models were developed. However, the evidence of pathogenic and histological alterations of the so-called diabetic cardiomyopathy (DCM) is still poorly understood in humans. Here, we provide a stringent literature analysis to investigate unique data regarding human DCM. This approach established that lipotoxic-related events might play a central role in the initiation and progression of human DCM. The major limitation in the acquisition of human data is due to the fact of heart specimen availability. Postmortem analysis revealed the end stage of the disease; thus, we need to gain knowledge on the pathogenic events from the early stages until cardiac fibrosis underlying the end-stage HF.

Uhl’s anomaly: perspective of fetal echocardiography and histopathological correlation

We report a case of Uhl’s anomaly imaged at 19 weeks of gestation by fetal echocardiography with pathological confirmation by anatomical gross heart specimen and tissue histology. Uhl’s anomaly of the right ventricle is a rare cardiac disorder with isolated right ventricular enlargement with almost complete absence of the right ventricular myocardium.