Cardiac Steatosis Potentiates Angiotensin II Effects in the Heart

How does the fatty heart—clinically known as cardiac steatosis—respond to other stimuli, like hypertension? In this podcast, Associate Editor Ajay Shah (King's College London) interviews lead author Denis Glenn (University of California San Francisco) and content expert Hemal Patel (University of California San Diego) about the intriguing work by Glenn and colleagues which used angiotensin II as a proxy for hypertension in a mouse model of cardiac steatosis to study the mechanisms behind the increased sensitivity to angiotensin and the effect on fibrosis and heart function. Listen as we weave together the concepts of a “double-hit” disease model, lipid levels and their potential effects on Ang II receptor signaling, and of course, an 18th Century reference to cor adiposum and its modern day equivalent—fatty deposition in the heart. How can this work be translated to the clinic? Listen and learn.

Denis J. Glenn, Michelle C. Cardema, Wei Ni, Yan Zhang, Yerem Yeghiazarians, Dmitry Grapov, Oliver Fiehn, David G. Gardner Cardiac Steatosis Potentiates Angiotensin II Effects in the Heart Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol, published February 15, 2015. DOI: 10.1152/ajpheart.00742.2014.