Lay summary
Heart disease causes nearly two-thirds of deaths in people with type 2 diabetes. In Aotearoa New Zealand, Māori experience higher rates and worse outcomes from this condition. Current treatments mostly focus on controlling blood glucose, but this hasn’t solved the problem. Our research explores a new idea: that another sugar, fructose, may play a key role in diabetic heart disease. The purpose of this project is to test whether targeting fructose can be an effective treatment. The research will be conducted using diabetic mice to study how fructose affects heart function and whether new fructose-targeting treatments can improve heart health. Our expected outcome is to deliver a novel effective therapy that could lead to significant health benefits with improved quality of life, reduced hospitalizations and prolonged life expectancy in diabetic patients with heart disease. These outcomes would have substantial economic benefit by mitigating the escalating healthcare costs of diabetic heart disease.