Myocardial Extracellular Volume Expansion in Type 2 Diabetes Is Associated With Ischemic Heart Disease, Autonomic Neuropathy, and Active Smoking.

This article's main finding is the association of the myocardial ECV, a marker of interstitial fibrosis, with active but not former smoking and with ischemic heart disease and autonomic neuropathy in patients with type 2 diabetes. Additionally, multivariable adjustment for a variety of medications that are linked to fibrosis modulation could modulate an inverse association with albuminuria from being significant to nonsignificant, suggesting that this peculiar inverse association was confounded by the intake of these medications. In this article we also explore the relationship between hypertension and systolic blood pressure and the myocardial ECV-here with less clear results.