Oscar CASIS - Vitoria-Gasteiz - Spain

Professor of Physiology Universidad del País Vasco, Department of Physiology, Faculty of Pharmacy

Abstract

Diabetes, provably the oldest known human pathology, is a chronic metabolic disease characterized by hyperglycemia in the absence of treatment. Among the diabetes-associated complications, cardiovascular disease is the major cause of mortality and morbidity. Both type 1 and type 2 diabetic patients often show cardiac electrical remodeling, mainly a prolonged ventricular repolarization visible in the electrocardiogram as a lengthening of the QT interval duration. This is a qualitative marker of proarrhythmic risk, which correlates strongly with the risk of developing torsade de pointes, a form of ventricular tachycardia that can degenerate into ventricular fibrillation. Despite a correct blood glucose control, the alterations in cardiac repolarization are still present in treated patients.
At the cellular level, diabetes alters the expression and activity of several cardiac ion channels and their associated regulatory proteins. Changes in sodium, calcium and mainly potassium currents, collectively lead to a delay in action potential repolarization that increases the risk of developing life-threatening ventricular arrhythmias. However, the underlying mechanisms responsible for the alterations of cardiac ion channels have been elusive for decades.
In the last years, diabetes has been recognized as a disease with a strong inflammatory component. Circulating levels of several cytokines, such as TNF and IL1b among others, are increased in diabetes and are known to cause insulin resistance. Now we also know that these cytokines reduce the expression of cardiac potassium channels and prolongs cardiac repolarization. Thus, targeting the inflammatory system could be a good therapeutic approach to improve the metabolic alterations and reduce the arrhythmic risk of diabetic patients.

 

Biography

Graduated in Medicine and Surgery at the Universidad del País Vasco in Bilbao, Spain in 1991. Then moved to the Superior Council of Scientific Research, CSIC, to Dr. Juan Tamargo’s Lab in Madrid until 1993. From 1993 to 1994 worked at the University Centre for Biomedical Research, CUIB, in Colima, México, with Dr. José Antonio Sánchez-Chapula, where performed all the experiments for the PhD Thesis, that presented in 1996 at the Universidad del País Vasco.
In 1998 created the Cardiac Electrophysiology Lab at the Universidad del País Vasco, where work until now. During these years, made sabbatical stays at Mike Sanguinetti’s lab in the University of Utah, at the Carlos Chagas Filho Institute in Rio de Janeiro and now at the Université de Nantes.
Focus in two main fields: i) the physiology of cardiac ionic channels and their regulation by neurotransmitters, hormones and intracellular pathways; and ii) the cardiac electrical remodeling at the cellular level in endocrine diseases such as hypothyroidism and diabetes.
Editor and reviewer for scientific journals such as Frontiers in Pharmacology; Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology; Heart Rhythm; Diabetes; Diabetologia; Endocrinology; American Journal of Physiology; Science Signaling; The Journal of Physiology; Acta Physiologica; etc.
Grant reviewer for National Agencies: ANEP, Spain; A*STaR, Singapore; CONACyT, México; CNPq, Brasil; and FONCyT, Argentina.