Height and heart disease.

Height has a relationship with a number of medical conditions, including heart disease. Atrial fibrillation has been observed to be more common in taller individuals. Marfan syndrome, with its high prevalence of mitral valve disease and abnormalities of the aorta, is associated with increased height.

Safety of ultrasound contrast agents in patients with known or suspected cardiac shunts.

Contrast-enhanced ultrasound imaging is a radiation-free diagnostic tool that uses biocompatible ultrasound contrast agents (UCAs) to improve image clarity. UCAs, which do not contain dye, often salvage "technically difficult" ultrasound scans, increasing the accuracy and reliability of a front-line ultrasound diagnosis, reducing unnecessary downstream testing, lowering overall health care costs, changing therapy, and improving patient care. Two UCAs currently are approved and regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration.

Extreme hypothermia.

The authors have no funding, financial relationships, or conflicts of interest to disclose.

Recurrent, severe, and rapidly reversible apical ballooning syndrome in status asthmaticus.

Apical ballooning syndrome, or Tako-tsubo cardiomyopathy, is a peculiar form of transient left-ventricular dysfunction originally described as triggered by emotional stress. Subsequent reports indicated that physical stressors can also induce this clinical syndrome. We describe for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, a case of recurrent, severe, and quickly reversible apical ballooning syndrome provoked by the use of high-dose inhaled β-adrenergic agonists in status asthmaticus.

Significance of respiratory artifact in the electrocardiogram.

Electrocardiographic artifact is generally considered to be a nuisance. Respiratory artifact, however, is a physiologic signal that may carry useful diagnostic information. Our goal was to evaluate the characteristics, prevalence, and clinical significance of respiratory artifact observed in electrocardiograms (ECGs).

Effects of deletion and site-directed mutations on ligation steps of NAD+-dependent DNA ligase: a biochemical analysis of BRCA1 C-terminal domain.

DNA strand joining entails three consecutive steps: enzyme adenylation to form AMP-ligase, substrate adenylation to form AMP-DNA, and nick closure. In this study, we investigate the effects on ligation steps by deletion and site-directed mutagenesis of the BRCA1 C-terminal (BRCT) domain using NAD(+)-dependent DNA ligase from Thermus species AK16D. Deletion of the BRCT domain resulted in substantial loss of ligation activity, but the mutant was still able to form an AMP-ligase intermediate, suggesting that the defects caused by deletion of the entire BRCT domain occur primarily at steps after enzyme adenylation.