Dr. J Raul Herance, head of the Medical Molecular Imaging group at Vall d'Hebron Research Institute (VHIR) has received the award for best poster presentation at the European Molecular Imaging Meeting (EMIM 2022) in the Metabolic Imaging category, for the paper "Phenotyping type 2 diabetes in terms of myocardial insulin resistance and its potential cardiovascular consequences: a new strategy based on 18F-FDG PET/CT" published in the Journal of Personalized Medicine.

The study, led by the Medical Molecular Imaging and Diabetes and Metabolism groups at VHIR, identified that 60% of patients with controlled type 2 diabetes have myocardial insulin resistance and as a consequence have structural changes in the myocardium and more calcifications in the coronary arteries, thus more cardiovascular risk.

Researchers have developed an innovative methodology that allows precise determination of insulin resistance in myocardium in vivo through PET/CT, which has made it possible to phenotype patients with type 2 diabetes into two groups, while determining structural alterations in the heart and calcifications in the coronary arteries. Calcifications in the coronary arteries are one of the main risk factors for cardiovascular complications. For this reason, it has been possible to relate that patients with myocardial insulin resistance would be more likely to suffer this type of events.

European Molecular Imaging Congress

The European Molecular Imaging Meeting (EMIM) is the annual meeting of the European Molecular Imaging Society. More than 800 international professionals dedicated to medical imaging in biomedicine attended the 17th edition, held last March in Thessaloniki (Greece). In total, 218 posters were presented, among which 5 prizes were awarded.