Diabetes, and possibly the hypothyroidism that attends diabetes, impairs mechanical relaxation of ventricular muscle, in part by depressing the rate of Ca2+ uptake by sarcoplasmic reticulum. Left ventricular hypertrophy exacerbates the adverse effects of diabetes on cardiac performance, but its effects on relaxation variables have not been well characterized. We examined the impact of streptozotocin-induced diabetes (8 weeks) on ventricular pressure load-dependent relaxation and sarcoplasmic reticular calcium uptake of hearts from spontaneously hypertensive rats and Wistar-Kyoto rats. Subsets of diabetic hypertensive rats were treated with either insulin (10 units/kg/day) or triiodothyronine (8-10 micrograms/kg/day). Diabetes impaired load-dependent relaxation and depressed sarcoplasmic reticular calcium uptake only in spontaneously hypertensive rat hearts. Either insulin or triiodothyronine treatment prevented the diabetes-induced depressions of both mechanical and biochemical indexes of relaxation. The results suggest that 1) hypertrophic ventricles of spontaneously hypertensive rats are more susceptible to the detrimental effects of diabetes on relaxation indexes than are the nonhypertrophic Wistar-Kyoto rat ventricles, and 2) the hypothyroidism that attends diabetes may contribute to the impaired relaxation of diabetic spontaneously hypertensive rat left ventricle.