Drug therapy for the cardiac complications of diabetes

Abstract

Despite the widespread use of statins, ACE inhibitors and aspirin, cardiovascular disease in diabetes remains a major public health burden. In addition to coronary artery disease, diabetes has also been repeatedly implicated in the pathogenesis of chronic heart failure (CHF), in which 20-30% of patients report diabetes as a co-morbidity. New therapeutic strategies targeted to the diabetic patient are therefore needed. The present review focuses on two such strategies in which drug development has recently advanced from the pre-clinical to clinical studies: The modulation of advanced glycation end products and protein kinase C activation. © 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd.