Publications by authors named "Davison B"
Solvent toxicity limits -butanol fermentation titer, increasing the cost and energy consumption for subsequent separation processes and making biobased production more expensive and energy-intensive than petrochemical approaches. Amphiphilic solvents such as -butanol partition into the cell membrane of fermenting microorganisms, thinning the transverse structure, and eventually causing a loss of membrane potential and cell death. In this work, we demonstrate the deleterious effects of -butanol partitioning upon the lateral dimension of the membrane structure, called membrane domains or lipid rafts.
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- The study aimed to understand the outcomes of patients experiencing worsening heart failure (WHF) while receiving outpatient treatment and to identify factors linked to poor responses to loop diuretics.
- Between September 2022 and March 2023, 44 patients with WHF symptoms were monitored weekly; improvements in symptoms and quality of life were noted, but certain biomarkers indicated a risk for poor diuretic response.
- High levels of cystatin C, NT-proBNP, and troponin T were found to be strong indicators of inadequate response to fluid treatment in these patients, suggesting a need for alternative therapies for those affected.
Aims: Serelaxin is recombinant human relaxin-2, a hormone responsible for haemodynamic adaptations and organ protection in pregnancy. In the RELAX-AHF trial, serelaxin demonstrated reductions in cardiac, renal and hepatic damage. In RELAX-AHF-2, organ damage-related biomarkers were assessed in a biomarker substudy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The prognostic importance of residual congestion after acute heart failure (AHF) hospitalization is still debated.
Objectives: The authors aimed to assess the impact of residual congestion in a large cohort of patients with AHF enrolled in the RELAX-AHF-2 (Relaxin in Acute Heart Failure 2) trial.
Methods: Residual congestion was assessed at day 5 after admission among hospitalized patients using an established composite congestion score (CCS) based on the presence of orthopnea, peripheral edema, and increased jugular venous pressure, ranging from 0 to 8 points.
Article Synopsis
- Excessive fluctuations in blood pressure are linked to higher risks of serious health issues like cardiovascular mortality and stroke, possibly due to patients not consistently following medical advice.
- A new trial uses an algorithm to track blood pressure variability in patients' electronic health records (EHR) and offers remote interventions to improve adherence to treatment.
- The study aims to identify patients with high variability and evaluate the impact of the intervention on their blood pressure, while also ensuring a fair allocation of healthcare resources.
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- Cardiogenic shock (CS) poses significant health risks, necessitating effective interventions to maintain blood pressure and tissue perfusion, while current treatments, like inotropes, can lead to serious side effects.
- The SEISMiC study aims to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of istaroxime, a new drug that may improve blood flow without overstimulating adrenergic receptors, in patients at risk for CS.
- This multinational, double-blind study involves patients with severe heart failure and aims to measure the drug's impact on blood pressure and other cardiac metrics over a 60-hour period, aiming to clarify istaroxime's potential benefits in managing pre-CS conditions.
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- A study looked at how steroids, like prednisone, help reduce congestion in patients with acute heart failure (AHF).
- Patients taking prednisone showed more improvement in their congestion levels compared to those receiving regular care.
- The results suggest that steroids can help with symptoms related to congestion, but more research is needed to confirm these findings.
Article Synopsis
- - Anemia is a common issue among heart failure patients, affecting their treatment outcomes, and this study aimed to examine how anemia prevalence changes and its relationship with clinical results in heart failure patients from the STRONG-HF study.
- - In the study of 1077 patients, anemia rates rose from 27.2% at enrollment to 32.1% at 90 days, with a slightly higher primary composite outcome observed in anemic patients, but the difference wasn't statistically significant.
- - Patients with baseline anemia showed less improvement in health-related quality of life, while the incidence of anemia was higher in those receiving high-intensity care compared to usual care; factors like male sex and non-European regions were linked to a higher
Aims: Acute heart failure (AHF) is a major cause of hospitalizations and death in the elderly. However, elderly patients are often underrepresented in randomized clinical trials. We analysed the impact of age on clinical outcomes and response to treatment in patients enrolled in Relaxin in Acute Heart Failure (RELAX-AHF-2), a study that included older patients than in previous AHF trials.
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- * Patients receiving prednisone showed a significant reduction in inflammation as indicated by decreased levels of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) and a notably lower risk of heart failure worsening, readmissions, or death over 90 days compared to the usual care group.
- * While burst steroid therapy improved outcomes like quality of life and reduced heart failure risks, it was associated with more adverse events like hyperglycemia, indicating a need for larger studies to confirm these findings and further assess safety
Background: Rapid uptitration of guideline-directed medical therapy (GDMT) before and after discharge in hospitalized heart failure (HF) patients is feasible, is safe, and improves outcomes; whether this is also true in patients with coexistent atrial fibrillation/flutter (AF/AFL) is not known.
Objectives: This study sought to investigate whether rapid GDMT uptitration before and after discharge for HF is feasible, safe and beneficial in patients with and without AF/AFL.
Methods: In this secondary analysis of the STRONG-HF (Safety, Tolerability, and Efficacy of Rapid Optimization, Helped by NT-proBNP Testing, of Heart Failure Therapies) trial, GDMT uptitration and patient outcomes were analyzed by AF/AFL status and type (permanent, persistent, paroxysmal).
Article Synopsis
- Traditional biomedical AI models are limited in flexibility and can't easily use comprehensive information for real-world applications.
- BiomedGPT is introduced as an open-source, lightweight generalist AI model capable of performing various biomedical tasks, achieving top results in many experiments.
- It shows strong performance in tasks like radiology question answering, report generation, and summarization, indicating that training with diverse data can enhance the utility of biomedical AI in diagnosis and workflow efficiency.
Aims: The optimal dose of diuretics and nitrates for acute heart failure treatment remains uncertain. This study aimed to assess the association between intravenous nitrates and loop diuretics doses within the initial 4 h of emergency department presentation and the number of days alive and out of hospital (NDAOH) through 30 days.
Methods: This was an ancillary study of the ELISABETH stepped-wedge cluster randomized trial that included 502 acute heart failure patients 75 years or older in 15 French emergency departments.
Article Synopsis
- Heart failure (HF) is a serious systemic disease that leads to high levels of illness and hospital visits, significantly lowering patients' quality of life.
- The text stresses the need for high-intensity care to ensure that patients receive the optimal doses of guideline-directed medical therapy (GDMT) to improve their health outcomes.
- It also addresses challenges to achieving these optimal treatments, like patient adherence and comorbid conditions, while exploring future possibilities for enhancing care in HF patients.
Article Synopsis
- The STRONG-HF trial tested the effectiveness of rapidly increasing neurohormonal blockade in patients with acute heart failure (AHF) compared to usual care.
- Patients receiving high-intensity care (HIC) showed significantly higher rates of successful decongestion at day 90 (75%) compared to usual care (68%), alongside improvements in various decongestion markers.
- Successful decongestion was linked to a lower risk of hospital readmission or all-cause death, indicating that the HIC approach offers better long-term outcomes for AHF patients.
Background: Multimorbidity frequently occurs in patients with acute heart failure (AHF). The co-occurrence of comorbidities often follows specific patterns.
Objectives: This study investigated multimorbidity subtypes and their associations with clinical outcomes.
Aims: Inflammation has emerged as a potential key pathophysiological mechanism in heart failure (HF) in general and acute HF (AHF) specifically, with inflammatory biomarkers shown to be highly predictive of adverse outcomes in these patients. The CORTAHF study builds on both these data and the fact that steroid burst therapy has been shown to be effective in the treatment of respiratory diseases and COVID-19. Our hypothesis is that in patients with AHF and elevated C-reactive protein (CRP) levels without symptoms or signs of infection, a 7-day course of steroid therapy will lead to reduced inflammation and short-term improvement in quality of life and a reduced risk of worsening HF (WHF) events.
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- - Biologically active adrenomedullin (bio-ADM) has potential as a marker for residual congestion in heart failure (HF) patients, as shown in the STRONG-HF trial, which indicated that high-intensity care of guideline-directed medical therapy can improve patient outcomes.
- - A study measuring bio-ADM levels in 1,005 heart failure patients found that higher baseline bio-ADM concentrations were linked to increased risks of mortality and rehospitalization, while bio-ADM changes correlated with congestion status after 90 days.
- - Although bio-ADM showed modest predictive ability for patient outcomes, the study found that high-intensity care improved outcomes regardless of initial bio-ADM levels, and its change over 90
Lignocellulosic biomass is a highly sustainable and largely carbon dioxide neutral feedstock for the production of biofuels and advanced biomaterials. Although thermochemical pretreatment is typically used to increase the efficiency of cell wall deconstruction, genetic engineering of the major plant cell wall polymers, especially lignin, has shown promise as an alternative approach to reduce biomass recalcitrance. Poplar trees with reduced lignin content and altered composition were previously developed by overexpressing bacterial 3-dehydroshikimate dehydratase (QsuB) enzyme to divert carbon flux from the shikimate pathway.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The STRONG-HF trial showed that high-intensity care (HIC) consisting of rapid up-titration of guideline-directed medical therapy (GDMT) and close follow-up reduced all-cause death or heart failure (HF) readmission at 180 days compared to usual care (UC). We hypothesized that significant differences in patient characteristics, management, and outcomes over the enrolment period may exist.
Methods: Two groups of the 1,078 patients enrolled in STRONG-HF were created according to the order of enrolment within center.
Article Synopsis
- The study investigates the safety, tolerability, and efficacy of high-intensity care (HIC) for heart failure using the MAGGIC risk score, which is a risk assessment tool for patients with chronic heart failure.
- Patients in the STRONG-HF trial were divided into two groups, one receiving HIC with rapid medication uptitration and the other receiving usual care, with the main goal of comparing outcomes such as death and hospitalization rates at 180 days.
- Results showed that while HIC led to higher medication use, the overall death or readmission rates varied according to the MAGGIC risk score, suggesting that the severity of heart failure risk impacts treatment outcomes.
Aims: The effects of initiating sacubitril/valsartan in patients with stable heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) on response to fluid and sodium expansion are unknown.
Methods And Results: We have explored changes in natriuresis, diuresis, and congestion in response to the administration of intravenous fluid/sodium load in patients with HFrEF before as compared to after the initiation of sacubitril/valsartan. At baseline (before sacubitril/valsartan initiation) and 2 and 3 months after the initiation, patients underwent an evaluation that consisted of three phases of 3 h: the rest phase (0-3 h), the load phase (3-6 h) in which 1 L of intravenous Ringer solution was administered, and the diuretic phase (6-9 h) at the beginning of which furosemide was administered.