Publications by authors named "Dia Smiley"
Article Synopsis
- - Transthyretin cardiac amyloidosis (ATTR-CA) is more commonly diagnosed in older men, but research indicates that women may be underrepresented in previous statistics regarding its prevalence.
- - The SCAN-MP study used nuclear imaging to assess ATTR-CA in older Black and Caribbean Hispanic individuals, revealing that this cohort had a higher percentage of women (31.3%) compared to a referral center (13.3%).
- - Women in the SCAN-MP cohort displayed a less severe form of the disease, indicated by higher heart function and lower heart mass, suggesting that targeted identification in women is essential to address existing sex disparities in ATTR-CA diagnoses.
Article Synopsis
- * The study found that anemia linked to higher risks for all-cause and cardiovascular hospitalizations, with significant statistics demonstrating this correlation.
- * Despite the correlation, when adjusting for age and other factors, anemia was mainly associated with an increased hazard for hospitalizations rather than mortality, highlighting the need for more research on how treating anemia might improve patient outcomes.
Article Synopsis
- The study examines the clinical outcomes of 419 patients diagnosed with transthyretin cardiac amyloidosis (ATTR-CA) from 2001 to 2021, focusing on changes in diagnosis and treatment over time.
- It found that more recent patients are generally older, have less severe disease, and are more likely to be treated with tafamidis, which significantly improves survival rates compared to earlier diagnosed patients.
- Key results show that a higher Columbia score indicates a greater risk of mortality or need for heart transplantation, while tafamidis notably decreases this risk, highlighting the importance of early treatment.
Article Synopsis
- - Technetium-labeled radiotracers like Tc-99m PYP are used to diagnose transthyretin cardiac amyloidosis (ATTR-CA), but the significance of its uptake outside the heart (extracardiac uptake) is not well understood.
- - In the SCAN-MP study, primarily involving Black and Hispanic participants over 60 with heart failure, researchers found that 11.1% of subjects had extracardiac Tc-99m PYP uptake, with kidney and bone uptake being the most common.
- - Despite the discovery of extracardiac uptake in these participants, only 1.1% had findings that were clinically actionable, indicating that most of the uptake was not significant for further
Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) is a heterogeneous syndrome, and cardiac amyloidosis (CA) is one of the causes of HFpEF, that has established and emerging treatment options. However, it remains an underdiagnosed and often overlooked cause of HFpEF. The importance of early diagnosis cannot be emphasized enough, as emerging therapies are more effective early in the course of the disease.
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- Lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) surgery often involves the resection of ligamentum flavum, and this study examined the potential presence of transthyretin (TTR) amyloid in older patients, which could be a modifiable factor in LSS cases.
- In a study of 47 older adults undergoing lumbar spine decompression, amyloid was found in 34% of participants, with a higher prevalence in those aged 75 and older.
- The study identified TTR as the precursor protein in a majority of amyloid cases, but clinical and quality-of-life measures did not show significant differences between patients with or without amyloid.
FDG PET is used in cardiac sarcoidosis (CS) diagnosis and management, including decisions about initiation and titration of immunosuppression. However, optimal methods to identify sarcoidosis-related inflammation on these scans is unknown. Traditional interpretive methods for FDG PET rely on qualitative visual analysis, but quantitative techniques including standardized uptake values (SUVs) may be more specific.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe cardiac regenerative capacity of MRL/MpJ mouse remains a controversy. Although the MRL mouse has been reported to exhibit minimal scarring and subsequent cardiac regeneration after cryoinjury of the right ventricle, multiple studies have been unable to replicate this cardiac regenerative capacity after both cryogenic and coronary ligation cardiac injury. Therefore, we evaluated the cardiac regenerative wound-healing response and functional recovery of MRL mice compared to C57 mice, in response to a clinically relevant left ventricular (LV) coronary ligation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFactor IXa as a target for anticoagulation in thrombotic disorders and conditions.
Drug Discov Today
September 2014
From acute coronary syndrome (ACS) to the prevention of cardioembolic events in patients with atrial fibrillation and thrombosis of mechanical heart valves, there is a quest to develop a new generation of anticoagulants. Perhaps the 'holy grail' of antithrombotic therapy is not only a drug that will prevent coagulation without promoting bleeding but also an anticoagulant that is easily reversible should the clinical need arise. Further, an optimally designed anticoagulant would have broad applications to include arterial, venous, hybrid conditions (atrial flutter and fibrillation) and nonbiological materials.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe cardiovascular benefits of menopausal hormone therapy (MHT) remain controversial. The earlier clinical observations that cardiovascular disease (CVD) was less common in MHT users compared to non-users suggested cardiovascular benefits of MHT. Also, experimental studies have identified estrogen receptors ERalpha, ERbeta and GPR30, which mediate genomic or non-genomic effects in vascular endothelium, smooth muscle, and extracellular matrix (ECM).
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