“…Importantly, despite the discrepancies in metabolic alterations all these animal models developed pre-diabetic cardiomyopathy, characterized by several cardiac alterations. For instance, increased heart rate was reported in five models[ 27 , 48 , 51 , 56 , 63 ]; however, other studies in which this parameter was evaluated did not report changes[ 60 , 62 , 65 , 66 ]. Systolic dysfunction has also been observed, including decreased heart contractility, ventricular pressure, and intracellular Ca 2+ transient amplitude[ 27 , 55 , 60 , 67 - 71 ], along with reduced fractional shortening[ 55 , 65 - 67 , 70 - 72 ] (Table 1 ).…”