Ethnicity and skin autofluorescence-based risk-engines for cardiovascular disease and diabetes mellitus.

Skin auto fluorescence (SAF) is used as a proxy for the accumulation of advanced glycation end products (AGEs) and has been proposed to stratify patients into cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes mellitus (DM) risk groups. This study evaluates the effects of seven different ethnicities (Arab, Central-East African, Eastern Mediterranean, European, North African, South Asian and Southeast Asian) and gender on SAF as well as validating SAF assessment as a risk estimation tool for CVD and DM in an Arabian cohort. SAF data from self-reported healthy 2,780 individuals, collated from three independent studies, has been linear modelled using age and gender as a covariate.

Increased body mass index is associated with larger renal calculi.

Objective: To examine the relationship between the body mass index and the size of renal stones in a group of patients with urolithiasis.

Methods: One-hundred seventy-three patients with renal stones were enrolled. Body mass index was calculated on the basis of height and weight measurements, and stone size was either measured accurately (143 patients) or estimated by the radiologist or managing urologist (30 patients).