LEP and diabetes mellitus: Whilst a type 2 model may be more clinically relevant, it should be noted that, of these, only db/db mice show discernible cardiac dysfunction after a prolonged period whilst data analysis in such models may be confused by the cardiovascular effects of obesity and/or dysfunctional leptin signalling, so STZ diabetes (which shares common features with type 2 diabetes) was considered to be the most appropriate choice for our study [1, 3, 5, 37].