Researchers at the University of Toronto put forth a novel approach for the early detection of heart failure and discovered that initial impairments might arise not in the heart, but within the leg vessels. Animal studies revealed: issues with microcirculation in the lower limb muscles occur several months before MRI captures the thickening of the heart muscle or the enlargement of the atria—traditional, yet late, indicators of the condition.
The paper’s authors announced that assessing blood flow in the legs enables detection of changes much sooner than standard methods. To achieve this, they adapted a specialized contrast MRI technique previously utilized only for evaluating cardiac status. The new procedure allowed visualization of minor irregularities within the limb vessels.
An intriguing aspect of the study was the identification of sex differences: in diabetic male rats, vascular narrowing was more pronounced and advanced more rapidly than in females. This suggests the necessity of considering gender when developing diagnostic strategies.
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