Treatment of cardiovascular complications in diabetic rats by doses of cilazapril

Abstract

Diabetes mellitus is associated with an increased incidence of cardiovascular complications including myocardial function. It has recently been showed to be associated with alteration of the rennin angiotensin system. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to evaluate therapeutic effects of angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor (ACE-I) on cardiovascular changes in diabetic rats including to evaluate the major mechanism of ACE-I that can prevent the cardiovascular morphologic changed in diabetes due to the decrease of hypertension or due to the direct inhibition of trophic effect of angiotensin II(AngII). The hemodynamic parameters such as mean arterial pressure (MAP), systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), heart rate (HR),aortic flow rate (AFR), coronary flow rate (CFR), left ventricular isotonic contraction (LVIC), pathological finding such as ventricular wall, interventricular septum and coronary arterial wall thickness were determined. The results showed that all the hemodynamic parameters of STZ-rats were significantly different than the controls at 8 and 20 weeks after the STZ-injections. The ACE-I seemed to retard these changes. Besides, the STZ-rats treated with antihypertensive and non-antihypertensive doses of cilazapril also showed less diabetic abnormalities of ventricular and arterial wall hypertrophy. It is concluded that cilazapril could prevent and treat the cardiovascular changes resulting from diabetic complications. The mechanism that can prevent the cardiovascular morphologic changes is most likely due to the direct inhibition of trophic effect of AngII.