Evaluation of myocardial fibrosis in diabetes with cardiac magnetic resonance T1-mapping: Correlation with the high-level hemoglobin A1c

•Myocardial fibrosis is an important stage of development of diabetic cardiomyopathy, which is closely related to heart failure.•The severity of myocardial fibrosis is higher in patients with high level of glycosylated hemoglobin.•Glycosylated hemoglobin is independently and positively correlated with myocardial fibrosis and can be used as an independent predictor of myocardial fibrosis in diabetic patients. The aim of the study was to assess the extracellular volume fraction (ECV) in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients with different level of hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) by cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR), and the ability of HbA1c to predict myocardial fibrosis. In total, 80 T2DM patients and 20 age- and sex-matched controls were prospective enrolled and underwent CMR to obtain ECV value and LV function parameters. We divided all patients into a group of HbA1c