Lung Ultrasound-Implemented Diagnosis of Acute Decompensated Heart Failure in the ED: A SIMEU Multicenter Study.

Background: Lung ultrasonography (LUS) has emerged as a noninvasive tool for the differential diagnosis of pulmonary diseases. However, its use for the diagnosis of acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF) still raises some concerns. We tested the hypothesis that an integrated approach implementing LUS with clinical assessment would have higher diagnostic accuracy than a standard workup in differentiating ADHF from noncardiogenic dyspnea in the ED.

Mental deterioration correlates with response of natural killer (NK) cell activity to physiological modifiers in patients with short history of Alzheimer's disease.

Natural killer (NK) cell activity of peripheral blood mononuclear (PBM) cells was measured in 16 subjects with mild to moderate senile dementia of Alzheimer's type (sDAT) chosen for short history of disease and no medication, and in 17 age- and sex-matched controls. Levels of cytotoxicity at baseline and after PBM cell exposure to modifiers either negative (cortisol 10(-6) M) or positive (rIL-2 650 IU/ml and rIFN-gamma 100 UI/ml, respectively) were related to indices of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) function and Gottfries Bråne Rating Scale (GBS) score for mental deterioration. Spontaneous NK cell activity was not significantly different in sDAT subjects vs controls.