A condition called pre-diabetes, if not carefully managed will lead to (type2) diabetes eventually.

People are considered pre-diabetic if their fasting blood sugar is from 100 to 125 mg/dL (5.6 to 6.9 mmol/L) and is considered to have impaired fasting glucose (pre-diabetes).

Patients in this category should follow a strict diet and exercise on top of medications in order to prevent eventual development to diabetes.




Now, there is a breakthrough from UT Southwestern Medical Center that will benefit those that have pre-diabetes: a simple imaging technique that reveals the fat buildup in the hearts of pre-diabetic people long before symptoms of heart disease or diabetes appears.

The technique detects fat accumulation in cells of the beating heart in a way no other clinical method can, the researchers said, and may provide a way to screen patients for early signs of heart disease in diabetes.

According to Dr. Lidia Szczepaniak, assistant professor of internal medicine at UT Southwestern and senior author of the study:

"Hearts beat; people breathe; and magnetic resonance imaging is very sensitive to motion, so we had to find a way to electronically 'freeze' the image of the heart. We wanted a noninvasive method to study the beating human heart.

There is currently no way to clinically evaluate the fatty heart. Using this technique, which analyzes magnetic signals, we might be able to determine if people are prone to heart disease very early before the disease progresses.

This method might also allow us to measure the effectiveness of medical treatments targeted toward lowering fat in the heart."

The said imaging technique captures the signal from a beating heart as a person lies in an ordinary magnet used for MRI scanning.

Findings of the above study appear in the the September 4 issue of Circulation- the journal of the American Heart Association.

Find more details from UT Southwestern Medical Center.

[Photo Credit: www.medicalimagingmag.com]