Cardiac hypertrophy also develops in obese rodents fed high-fat diet (HFD) [10,11], and studies in mice with (functional) leptin deficiency suggested that the cardiac hypertrophy developing in states of chronic hyperleptinemia may result from the inability to transduce anti-hypertrophic and/or cardioprotective effects of the adipokine [12,13]. This evidence concerns the gene LEP and cardiac hypertrophy.