Increased Myocardial Uptake of Dietary Fatty Acids Linked to Cardiac Dysfunction in Glucose- Intolerant Humans

Impaired cardiac systolic and diastolic function has been observed in preclinical models and in subjects with type 2 diabetes. Using a recently validated positron emission tomography (PET) imaging method with 14(R,S)-[18F]-fluoro-6-thia-heptadecanoic acid to quantify organ-specific dietary fatty acid partitioning, we demon-strate in this study that overweight and obese subjects with im-paired glucose tolerance (IGT+) display significant increase in fractional myocardial dietary fatty acid uptake over the first 6 h postprandial compared with control individuals (IGT2). Mea-sured by [11C]acetate with PET, IGT+ subjects have a significant increase in myocardial oxidative index. IGT+ subjects have sig-nificantly reduced left ventricular stroke volume and ejection fraction (LVEF) and tend to display impaired diastolic function, as assessed by PET ventriculography. We demonstrate an inverse relationship between increased myocardial dietary fatty acid par