High blood-sugar levels may harden heart valves

HOUSTON -- Rice University bio-engineers have found new evidence of a possible link between diabetes and the hardening of heart valves.

A Rice lab, in collaboration with the University of Texas (UT) Medical School at Houston, discovered that the interstitial cells that turn raw materials into heart valves need just the right amount of nutrients for proper metabolic function.

The surprise was that feeding them too much glucose, a sugar, slowed the cells down.

Read more from The Sugar Land Sun, a Houston Community Newspaper partner