Research progress of alternations of ion channels in diabetes cardiomyopathy

Diabetes cardiomyopathy (DCM) is a myocardial disease that occurs in diabetic patients and is different from hypertensive heart disease, coronary atherosclerotic heart disease or other cardiac lesions. On the basis of metabolic disorder and microvascular disease, this disease leads to extensive focal necrosis of myocardium, subclinical cardiac dysfunction, and eventually progresses to heart failure, arrhythmia and cardiogenic shock, and even sudden death in severe patients. Ion channels play important roles in maintaining the functions of normal cardiomyocytes, including maintaining the stability of cell membrane potential, normal heart rhythm conduction, myocardial contraction and energy metabolism of cardiomyocytes. In diabetic cardiomyopathy, ion channels are closely related to arrhythmias, ventricular remodeling and heart failure. Over the past years, prominent changes in K⁺, Na⁺, Ca²⁺ and anion channels have been found to play important roles in the regulation of diabetic cardiac functions. Here, we focus on diabetic cardiomyopathy from an ion channel perspective and summarize recent findings to discuss the contributions of ion channel to pathological functions in DCM.