Cardiovascular disease is a major health problem leading to myocardial infarction and stroke as well as peripheral vascular disease. Diabetes accelerates vascular disease development and is associated with premature mortality and morbidity. Current treatment strategies such as intensified glycaemic and blood pressure control fail to prevent vascular complications in diabetes. Thus, novel more effective treatments are urgently needed. More recently, it has been demonstrated that oxidative stress derived from NOX5 circulating in the blood play a critical role in the acceleration of diabetic vascular disease.
Dr Tomasz Block's research team aim to measure and link NOX-5 expression in circulating immune cells in patients with diabetes and clustering complications including ischaemic heart disease in order to assess its suitability as a biomarker to identify those patients at high risk for cardiovascular and renal events. This will help with patient and treatment stratification and may also provide the rationale to develop specific NOX-5 inhibitors.
Last updated04 April 2022