Winnipeggers battling diabetes, multiple sclerosis, cholesterol problems and spinal cord injuries should know that there are many doctors in the house and they're working on innovative projects to make life easier for thousands of patients. This province has been a hotbed of medical research over the past decade. The medical struggles continue. Here's an update on who's researching what and how the findings might affect your life. At the St. Boniface Hospital Research Foundation, Dr. Grant Pierce works in the Ion Transport Lab of the cardiovascular department, piecing together the clues to heart failure in diabetics.
Heart failure is their number one cause of death.
The cause may be linked to calcium movements in the heart with a fluctuation in levels changing heart function. As the calcium goes into the muscle cell, there are contractions. In diabetes, what we think happens is an alteration in normal calcium movements. Verapamil, currently used on non-diabetic heart patients. But the same drug also holds promise in treating the cataracts that lead to blindness in diabetes.