Gemma Cooper MSc Dissertation 2015/16

Simulating the impact of diabetes on models of electrical activity in heart cells

Supervised by R.Clayton

Abstract

Patients with diabetes often experience periods of hypoglycaemia  which generates symptoms such as an increase in heart rate, and changes in the concentration of ions such as potassium. For the heart to pump it undergoes electrical activation, this acts to initiate and synchronise  mechanical contraction of the heart muscle. This sequence of electrical activation and recovery can be altered by hypoglycaemia .

The main aims of this project are to produce a working version of a heart cell model in normal conditions and then use the cell model to show how hypoglycaemia  affects electrical activity in human heart cells as identified from the literature available. The model that will be used is the Ten Tusscher  model and will simulate the effects that heart cells experience at mild, medium and severe hypoglycaemia . This is done mainly through changing the level of potassium ions, running the simulation and examining the repolarisation . The results collected are related back to others work and show that in my experiments potassium does not have as much of an effect as expected.