Complications Associated With Nitrate Use in Patients Presenting With Acute Pulmonary Edema and Concomitant Moderate or Severe Aortic Stenosis.

Study Objective: We evaluate the incidence of complications associated with the use of nitrates in patients presenting with acute pulmonary edema and concomitant moderate or severe aortic stenosis compared with patients without aortic stenosis. Nitrates are contraindicated in severe aortic stenosis because of the theoretical yet unproven risk of precipitating profound hypotension.

Methods: A cohort design with retrospective chart review study was conducted at two Canadian hospitals.

The evolution of extracellular fibrillins and their functional domains.

Fibrillins constitute the major backbone of multifunctional microfibrils in elastic and non-elastic extracellular matrices, and are known to interact with several binding partners including tropoelastin and integrins. Here, we study the evolution of fibrillin proteins. Following sequence collection from 39 organisms representative of the major evolutionary groups, molecular evolutionary genetics and phylogeny inference software were used to generate a series of evolutionary trees using distance-based and maximum likelihood methods.