Blood pressure and risk of venous thromboembolism: a cohort analysis of 5.5 million UK adults and Mendelian randomization studies.

Aims: Evidence for the effect of elevated blood pressure (BP) on the risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) has been conflicting. We sought to assess the association between systolic BP and the risk of VTE.

Methods And Results: Three complementary studies comprising an observational cohort analysis, a one-sample and two-sample Mendelian randomization were conducted using data from 5 588 280 patients registered in the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) dataset and 432 173 UK Biobank participants with valid genetic data.

Central Retinal Artery Occlusion Associated with Sildenafil Overdose.

Background: To report a patient with central retinal artery occlusion (CRAO) associated with sildenafil overdose. . A forty-two-year-old male presented three hours after sudden painless visual loss in the right eye.

Elevated blood pressure and risk of aortic valve disease: a cohort analysis of 5.4 million UK adults.

Aims: To test two related hypotheses that elevated blood pressure (BP) is a risk factor for aortic valve stenosis (AS) or regurgitation (AR).

Methods And Results: In this cohort study of 5.4 million UK patients with no known cardiovascular disease or aortic valve disease at baseline, we investigated the relationship between BP and risk of incident AS and AR using multivariable-adjusted Cox regression models.

Temporal trends and patterns in heart failure incidence: a population-based study of 4 million individuals.

Background: Large-scale and contemporary population-based studies of heart failure incidence are needed to inform resource planning and research prioritisation but current evidence is scarce. We aimed to assess temporal trends in incidence and prevalence of heart failure in a large general population cohort from the UK, between 2002 and 2014.

Methods: For this population-based study, we used linked primary and secondary electronic health records of 4 million individuals from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD), a cohort that is representative of the UK population in terms of age and sex.

Referral for Specialist Follow-up and Its Association With Post-discharge Mortality Among Patients With Systolic Heart Failure (from the National Heart Failure Audit for England and Wales).

For patients admitted with worsening heart failure (HF), early follow-up after discharge is recommended. Whether outcomes can be improved when follow-up is done by cardiologists is uncertain. We aimed to determine the association between cardiology follow-up and risk of death for patients with HF discharged from hospital.

Influenza vaccination and risk of hospitalization in patients with heart failure: a self-controlled case series study.

Aims: Evidence supporting yearly influenza vaccination in patients with chronic heart failure (HF) is limited, consequently leading to inconsistent guideline recommendations. We aimed to investigate the impact of influenza vaccination on the risk of hospitalization in HF patients.

Methods And Results: We used linked primary and secondary health records in England between 1990 and 2013.

Variation in hospital performance for heart failure management in the National Heart Failure Audit for England and Wales.

Objective: Investigation of variations in provider performance and its determinants may help inform strategies for improving patient outcomes.

Methods: We used the National Heart Failure Audit comprising 68 772 patients with heart failure with reduced left ventricular ejection fraction (HFREF), admitted to 185 hospitals in England and Wales (2007-2013). We investigated hospital adherence to three recommended key performance measures (KPMs) for inhospital care (ACE inhibitors (ACE-Is) or angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) on discharge, β-blockers on discharge and referral to specialist follow-up) individually and as a composite performance score.

Blood Pressure and Risk of Vascular Dementia: Evidence From a Primary Care Registry and a Cohort Study of Transient Ischemic Attack and Stroke.

Background And Purpose: Vascular dementia is the second most common form of dementia but reliable evidence on age-specific associations between blood pressure (BP) and risk of vascular dementia is limited and some studies have reported negative associations at older ages.

Methods: In a cohort of 4.28 million individuals, free of known vascular disease and dementia and identified from linked electronic primary care health records in the United Kingdom (Clinical Practice Research Datalink), we related BP to time to physician-diagnosed vascular dementia.

A user-centred home monitoring and self-management system for patients with heart failure: a multicentre cohort study.

Aims: Previous generations of home monitoring systems have had limited usability. We aimed to develop and evaluate a user-centred and adaptive system for health monitoring and self-management support in patients with heart failure.

Methods And Results: Patients with heart failure were recruited from three UK centres and provided with Internet-enabled tablet computers that were wirelessly linked with sensor devices for blood pressure, heart rate, and weight monitoring.

Usual blood pressure, peripheral arterial disease, and vascular risk: cohort study of 4.2 million adults.

Objectives: To determine the subgroup specific associations between usual blood pressure and risk of peripheral arterial disease, and to examine the relation between peripheral arterial disease and a range of other types of vascular disease in a large contemporary cohort.

Design: Cohort study.

Setting: Linked electronic health records from 1990 to 2013 in the United Kingdom.

Exploring mechanisms of spontaneous functional connectivity in MEG: how delayed network interactions lead to structured amplitude envelopes of band-pass filtered oscillations.

Spontaneous (or resting-state) brain activity has attracted a growing body of neuroimaging research over the last decades. Whole-brain network models have proved helpful to investigate the source of slow (<0.1 Hz) correlated hemodynamic fluctuations revealed in fMRI during rest.

How delays matter in an oscillatory whole-brain spiking-neuron network model for MEG alpha-rhythms at rest.

In recent years the study of the intrinsic brain dynamics in a relaxed awake state in the absence of any specific task has gained increasing attention, as spontaneous neural activity has been found to be highly structured at a large scale. This so called resting-state activity has been found to be comprised by nonrandom spatiotemporal patterns and fluctuations, and several Resting-State Networks (RSN) have been found in BOLD-fMRI as well as in MEG signal power envelope correlations. The underlying anatomical connectivity structure between areas of the brain has been identified as being a key to the observed functional network connectivity, but the mechanisms behind this are still underdetermined.

Non-Gaussian probabilistic MEG source localisation based on kernel density estimation.

There is strong evidence to suggest that data recorded from magnetoencephalography (MEG) follows a non-Gaussian distribution. However, existing standard methods for source localisation model the data using only second order statistics, and therefore use the inherent assumption of a Gaussian distribution. In this paper, we present a new general method for non-Gaussian source estimation of stationary signals for localising brain activity from MEG data.

Distinct neural mechanisms of individual and developmental differences in VSTM capacity.

Our ability to maintain visuo-spatial information increases gradually through childhood and is highly variable across individuals, although the cognitive and neural mechanisms underpinning these differences in capacity are unknown. We presented participants with arrays of to-be-remembered items containing two targets, four targets, or two targets and two distracters. The participants were divided into three groups: (i) high-capacity adults; (ii) low-capacity adults; and (iii) typically developing children.

Minor structural abnormalities in the infant face disrupt neural processing: a unique window into early caregiving responses.

Infant faces elicit early, specific activity in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), a key cortical region for reward and affective processing. A test of the causal relationship between infant facial configuration and OFC activity is provided by naturally occurring disruptions to the face structure. One such disruption is cleft lip, a small change to one facial feature, shown to disrupt parenting.

Dynamic state allocation for MEG source reconstruction.

Our understanding of the dynamics of neuronal activity in the human brain remains limited, due in part to a lack of adequate methods for reconstructing neuronal activity from noninvasive electrophysiological data. Here, we present a novel adaptive time-varying approach to source reconstruction that can be applied to magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG) data. The method is underpinned by a Hidden Markov Model (HMM), which infers the points in time when particular states re-occur in the sensor space data.

MEG can map short and long-term changes in brain activity following deep brain stimulation for chronic pain.

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) has been shown to be clinically effective for some forms of treatment-resistant chronic pain, but the precise mechanisms of action are not well understood. Here, we present an analysis of magnetoencephalography (MEG) data from a patient with whole-body chronic pain, in order to investigate changes in neural activity induced by DBS for pain relief over both short- and long-term. This patient is one of the few cases treated using DBS of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC).

Fusion of magnetometer and gradiometer sensors of MEG in the presence of multiplicative error.

Novel neuroimaging techniques have provided unprecedented information on the structure and function of the living human brain. Multimodal fusion of data from different sensors promises to radically improve this understanding, yet optimal methods have not been developed. Here, we demonstrate a novel method for combining multichannel signals.

Localizing heart sounds in respiratory signals using singular spectrum analysis.

Respiratory sounds are always contaminated by heart sound interference. An essential preprocessing step in some of the heart sound cancellation methods is localizing primary heart sound components. Singular spectrum analysis (SSA), a powerful time series analysis technique, is used in this paper.

Application of a null-beamformer to source localisation in MEG data of deep brain stimulation.

In this paper, we present an analysis of magnetoencephalography (MEG) signals from a patient with whole-body chronic pain in order to investigate changes in neural activity induced by DBS. The patient is one of the few cases treated using DBS of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Using MEG to reconstruct the neural activity of interest is challenging because of interference to the signal from the DBS device.

Variational Bayes for spatiotemporal identification of event-related potential subcomponents.

We propose a novel method for detection and tracking of event-related potential (ERP) subcomponents. The ERP subcomponent sources are assumed to be electric current dipoles (ECDs), and their locations and parameters (amplitude, latency, and width) are estimated and tracked from trial to trial. Variational Bayes implies that the parameters can be estimated separately using the likelihood function of each parameter.

A new method for spatiotemporal identification of event-related potential subcomponents.

In this study a novel method for tracking and separation of event-related potential (ERP) subcomponents from trial to trial is considered. The sources of ERP subcomponents are assumed to be electric current dipoles (ECD). The shape of each ERP subcomponent is also supposed to be monophasic wave and modeled using a Gaussian waveform.

The application of particle filters in single trial event-related potential estimation.

In this paper, an approach for the estimation of single trial event-related potentials (ST-ERPs) using particle filters (PFs) is presented. The method is based on recursive Bayesian mean square estimation of ERP wavelet coefficients using their previous estimates as prior information. To enable a performance evaluation of the approach in the Gaussian and non-Gaussian distributed noise conditions, we added Gaussian white noise (GWN) and real electroencephalogram (EEG) signals recorded during rest to the simulated ERPs.