Implications for Diabetes-Associated Cardiovascular Disease

Cardiovascular diseases represent a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in diabetes. Of the many animal models used in the study of non–insulin-dependent (type 2) diabetes, the JCR:LA-cp rat is unique in that it develops insulin resistance in the presence of obesity and manifests both peripheral and coronary vasculopa-thies. In this animal model, arterial vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) from homozygous obese (cp/cp) rats, but not from age-matched healthy (/ or /cp, collectively defined /?) littermates, display an “acti-vated ” phenotype in vitro and in vivo and have an elevated level of cAMP phosphodiesterase (PDE) activ-ity. In this report, we confirm that cp/cp rat aortic VSMCs have an elevated level of PDE3 activity and show that only particulate PDE3 (PDE3B) activity is ele