It has long been known that AL has both beneficial effects on
cardiovascular disease and associated risk factors, such as dyslipidemia,
hypercholesterolemia, hypertension, and anticoagulant
disorders, which were broadly reviewed elsewhere (Banerjee and
Maulik 2002). Today the medicinal application of AL is getting
widespread. The main findings of our research could be summarized
that STZ-induced diabetes caused the decrease in LVSP,
±dp/dtmax, and the increase in LVEDP. Interestingly, all of these
abnormalities induced by diabetes were improved by AL treatment
(8 mg/kg and 16 mg/kg). The results proved that AL improved
cardiac function of the diabetic rats when the indices of cardiac
function were measured. However, there is another question worthy
of consideration that AL protects against cardiac dysfunction in
STZ-induced diabetic rats but by what mechanism these effects are
achieved. Several studies suggested that ventricular dysfunction
associated with diabetes mellitus was also linked to the production
of ROS and hyperglycemia (An and Rodrigues 2006). Antioxidant
effect of AL has been concerned (Borek 2001), and studies have
shown that depressed blood glucose may be a possible mechanism
of myocardial protection (Su et al. 2007). We have a hypothesis
that AL improves cardiac function of the diabetic rats via inhibiting
myocardial fibrosis and apoptosis. Exhilaratingly, all these facts
have proved the accuracy of our hypothesis