Mitochondrial phylogeny and taxonomic revision of Italian and Slovenian fluvio-lacustrine barbels, Barbus sp. (Cypriniformes, Cyprinidae).

Background: Barbels are ray finned cyprinid fishes of the Old-World with partially unresolved, intricate taxonomy. Within the Barbus sensu lato paraphyletic assemblage, Barbus sensu stricto is a monophyletic tetraploid lineage of Europe, northern Africa and Middle East, including two monophyletic sibling genera: Barbus and Luciobarbus. Italy, Slovenia and northern Croatia are natively inhabited by several entities of the genus Barbus, whose relationships and taxonomic ranks are still unclear.

Anti-beta-2-glycoprotein I domain 1 identifies antiphospholipid antibodies-related injuries in patients with concomitant lupus nephritis.

Background: In this study we aimed to evaluate the usefulness of domain profiling of Beta-2-glycoprotein I(β2GPI)-Domain-1 (D1) antibodies in relation to antiphospholipid antibodies (aPL)-related nephropathy (aPL-N) in patients with biopsy-proven lupus nephritis (LN).

Methods: Of 124 consecutive patients (96 women, mean age 45.5 ± 12.

Merkel cell carcinoma of the forehead area: a literature review and case report.

Background: Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is an uncommon, aggressive malignancy of the skin, mostly affecting head and neck area in elderly white patients. Between head/neck sites, face accounts for 61% and forehead accounts for 17% of all face MCCs.

Purpose: We here present a literature review MCC cases arising in the forehead area, published in the English literature in the period 1987-2018, and report a personal observation with a late diagnosis and a treatment out of the current recommendations.

Association between autonomic control indexes and mortality in subjects admitted to intensive care unit.

This study checks whether autonomic markers derived from spontaneous fluctuations of heart period (HP) and systolic arterial pressure (SAP) and from their interactions with spontaneous or mechanical respiration (R) are associated with mortality in patients admitted to intensive care unit (ICU). Three-hundred consecutive HP, SAP and R values were recorded during the first day in ICU in 123 patients. Population was divided into survivors (SURVs, n = 83) and non-survivors (NonSURVs, n = 40) according to the outcome.

Effects of laparoscopic radical prostatectomy on intraoperative autonomic nervous system control of hemodynamics.

Background: Laparoscopic radical prostatectomy induces hemodynamic changes that have been supposed due to autonomic nervous system activity. The aim of this study is to measure the sympathetic and vagal modulation on hemodynamic response to steep Trendelenburg and pneumoperitoneum for laparoscopic surgery.

Methods: Autonomic nervous system modulation was assessed noninvasively through heart rate variability and arterial pressure variability analysis in patients undergoing elective laparoscopic radical prostatectomy and in awake volunteers during head-down tilt.

Pulse photoplethysmographic amplitude and heart rate variability during laparoscopic cholecystectomy: A prospective observational study.

Background: Surgical stress affects the autonomic nervous system by increasing sympathetic outflow. One method of monitoring sympathetic activity is pulse photoplethysmographic analysis. From this two indices can be derived - autonomic nervous system state (ANSS) and ANSS index (ANSSi).

The degree of cardiac baroreflex involvement during active standing is associated with the quality of life in fibromyalgia patients.

Fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) is a rheumatologic disorder characterized by chronic widespread pain, fatigue and other symptoms. Baroreflex dysfunction has been observed in women with FMS. However, it is unknown whether the limited involvement of the baroreflex control during an orthostatic stimulus has some impact on the quality of life of the FMS patient.

Assessing the strength of cardiac and sympathetic baroreflex controls via transfer entropy during orthostatic challenge.

The study assesses the strength of the causal relation along baroreflex (BR) in humans during an incremental postural challenge soliciting the BR. Both cardiac BR (cBR) and sympathetic BR (sBR) were characterized via BR sequence approaches from spontaneous fluctuations of heart period (HP), systolic arterial pressure (SAP), diastolic arterial pressure (DAP) and muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA). A model-based transfer entropy method was applied to quantify the strength of the coupling from SAP to HP and from DAP to MSNA.

Correction: Cardiovascular Variability Analysis and Baroreflex Estimation in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes in Absence of Any Manifest Neuropathy.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.

Cardiovascular interactions assessed via conditional joint transfer entropy in patients developing atrial fibrillation after coronary artery bypass graft surgery.

Assigned the universe of knowledge Ω as composed by one target and two exogenous signals, the conditional joint transfer entropy (CJTE), assessing the amount of information jointly transferred from the two sources to the target that can be uniquely linked to one of the two sources, was found useful to study cardiovascular control. We propose the assessment of CJTE from systolic arterial pressure (SAP) and respiration (R) to heart period (HP) conditioned on R (CJTESAP, R→HP|R) along the baroreflex, and from HP and R to SAP conditioned on R (CJTEHP, R→SAP|R) along the feedforward mechanical pathway, in 134 patients undergoing coronary artery bypass graft surgery before (PRE) and after (POST) the induction of general anesthesia. In this group 38 patients developed atrial fibrillation (AF) after surgery, while the remaining individuals did not (noAF, n=96).

Comparison between K-nearest-neighbor approaches for conditional entropy estimation: Application to the assessment of the cardiac control in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients.

The study evaluates the k-nearest-neighbor (KNN) strategy for the assessment of complexity of the cardiac neural control from spontaneous fluctuations of heart period (HP). Two different procedures were assessed: i) the KNN estimation of the conditional entropy (CE) proposed by Porta et al; ii) the KNN estimation of mutual information proposed by Kozachenko-Leonenko, refined by Kraskov-Stögbauer-Grassberger and here adapted for the CE estimation. The two procedures were compared over HP variability recordings obtained at rest in supine position and during head-up tilt (HUT) in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients and healthy subjects.

Mechanical ventilatory modes and cardioventilatory phase synchronization in acute respiratory failure patients.

Cardioventilatory phase synchronization was studied in ten critically ill patients admitted in intensive care unit (ICU) for acute respiratory failure under two mechanical ventilatory modes: (i) pressure controlled ventilation (PCV); (ii) pressure support ventilation (PSV). The two modalities were administered to the same patient in different times in a random order. Cardioventilatory phase interactions were typified by plotting the relative position of a heartbeat, detected from the electrocardiogram and collected in n groups, within m ventilatory cycles as a function of the progressive cardiac beat number via the synchrogram.

Simultaneous Characterization of Sympathetic and Cardiac Arms of the Baroreflex through Sequence Techniques during Incremental Head-Up Tilt.

We propose a sympathetic baroreflex (sBR) sequence method for characterizing sBR from spontaneous beat-to-beat fluctuations of muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA) and diastolic arterial pressure (DAP). The method exploits a previously defined MSNA variability quantifying the fluctuations of MSNA burst rate. The method is based on the detection of MSNA and DAP sequences characterized by the contemporaneous DAP increase and MSNA decrease or .

Are Nonlinear Model-Free Conditional Entropy Approaches for the Assessment of Cardiac Control Complexity Superior to the Linear Model-Based One?

Objective: We test the hypothesis that the linear model-based (MB) approach for the estimation of conditional entropy (CE) can be utilized to assess the complexity of the cardiac control in healthy individuals.

Methods: An MB estimate of CE was tested in an experimental protocol (i.e.

Nonlinear effects of respiration on the crosstalk between cardiovascular and cerebrovascular control systems.

Cardiovascular and cerebrovascular regulatory systems are vital control mechanisms responsible for guaranteeing homeostasis and are affected by respiration. This work proposes the investigation of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular control systems and the nonlinear influences of respiration on both regulations through joint symbolic analysis (JSA), conditioned or unconditioned on respiration. Interactions between cardiovascular and cerebrovascular regulatory systems were evaluated as well by performing correlation analysis between JSA indexes describing the two control systems.

Calibrated variability of muscle sympathetic nerve activity during graded head-up tilt in humans and its link with noradrenaline data and cardiovascular rhythms.

Muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA) variability is traditionally computed through a low-pass filtering procedure that requires normalization. We proposed a new beat-to-beat MSNA variability computation that preserves dimensionality typical of an integrated neural discharge (i.e.

Cardiovascular Variability Analysis and Baroreflex Estimation in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes in Absence of Any Manifest Neuropathy.

Introduction: Indexes derived from spontaneous heart period (HP) and systolic arterial pressure (SAP) fluctuations can detect autonomic dysfunction in individuals with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) associated to cardiovascular autonomic neuropathy (CAN) or other neuropathies. It is unknown whether HP and SAP variability indexes are sensitive enough to detect the autonomic dysfunction in DM patients without CAN and other neuropathies.

Methods: We evaluated 68 males aged between 40 and 65 years.

Effect of variations of the complexity of the target variable on the assessment of Wiener-Granger causality in cardiovascular control studies.

We hypothesized that Wiener-Granger causality (WGC) indexes might have different abilities in coping with modifications of the complexity of the target variable in the context of the assessment of the cardiovascular control from spontaneous fluctuations of heart period (HP), systolic arterial pressure (SAP) and respiratory activity (R). After having defined the universe of knowledge as the set Ω = {HP, SAP, R} and the unpredictability decrement (UPD) as the difference between the prediction error variances of the target signal computed in Ω after excluding the presumed cause (i.e.

General anesthesia reduces the information exchange between heart and circulation.

The study demonstrates the ability of an information-theoretic measure, such as the transfer entropy (TE), in detecting the depression of the cardiac baroreflex control and circulatory-cardio mechanical feedforward link during propofol-induced general anesthesia. TE was computed from spontaneous variability of heart period (HP) and systolic arterial pressure (SAP) in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass graft (CABG). TE from SAP to HP and from HP to SAP were evaluated by accounting for the confounding effect of respiration (R) affecting both HP and SAP (i.

Evaluation of the correlation between cardiac and sympathetic baroreflex sensitivity before orthostatic syncope.

The study investigates the two different aspects of the baroreflex control resulting in two baroreflex sensitivity (BRS) indexes: i) sympathetic BRS (sBRS); ii) cardiac BRS (cBRS). sBRS was assessed as the slope of the regression line of the conditional probability of detecting a burst on the integrated muscle nerve sympathetic activity (MSNA) given an assigned diastolic arterial pressure (DAP) on DAP. cBRS was estimated from spontaneous heart period (HP) and systolic arterial pressure (SAP) via a spectral approach in the low (0.

Cardiovascular control indexes in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients and their relation with clinical markers.

We studied the autonomic response to an orthostatic challenge (i.e. head-up tilt) in 52 amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients and 16 healthy subjects by means of power spectral analysis of heart period (HP) and systolic arterial pressure (SAP) variability.

Wiener-Granger causality in QT-HP variability interactions.

The study exploits a Wiener-Granger causality (WGC) approach in the time domain to assess directionality of the dynamical interactions between QT interval and heart period (HP) during a graded head-up tilt protocol challenging the cardiovascular control as a function of the tilt table inclination. QT interval and HP are approximated from the surface ECG as the temporal distance between the R-wave apex and T-wave offset and between two consecutive R-wave peaks respectively. The adopted WGC approach accounts for the confounding effect of respiration (RESP) affecting both QT and HP.

Time, frequency and information domain analysis of heart period and QT variability in asymptomatic long QT syndrome type 2 patients.

This study was designed to characterize in time, frequency and information domains heart period (HP) and QT interval variabilities in asymptomatic (ASYMP) long QT syndrome type 2 (LQT2) subjects. HP, approximated as the temporal distance between two consecutive R-wave peaks, and QT, approximated as the temporal distance between the R-wave peak and the T-wave offset, were automatically derived from 24h Holter recordings in 10 ASYMP LQT2 patients and 13 healthy non mutation carriers (NMC) subjects. All analyses were carried out during DAY (from 2 to 6 PM) and NIGHT (from 12 to 4 AM).

Disentangling cardiovascular control mechanisms during head-down tilt via joint transfer entropy and self-entropy decompositions.

A full decomposition of the predictive entropy (PE) of the spontaneous variations of the heart period (HP) given systolic arterial pressure (SAP) and respiration (R) is proposed. The PE of HP is decomposed into the joint transfer entropy (JTE) from SAP and R to HP and self-entropy (SE) of HP. The SE is the sum of three terms quantifying the synergistic/redundant contributions of HP and SAP, when taken individually and jointly, to SE and one term conditioned on HP and SAP denoted as the conditional SE (CSE) of HP given SAP and R.