Endothelial-derived nitric oxide impacts vascular smooth muscle cell phenotypes under high wall shear stress condition.

The Phenotypic states of vascular smooth muscle cells (SMCs) are essential to understanding vascular pathophysiology. SMCs in vessels generally express a specific set of contractile proteins, but decreased contractile protein expression, indicating a phenotypic shift, is a hallmark of vascular diseases. Recent studies have suggested the relation of abnormally high wall shear stress (WSS) of approximately 20 Pa with the aortic disease pathogenesis.

Short- and long-term performance of risk calculation tools for mortality in patients with acute coronary syndrome.

Background: The mortality rate of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) remains high. Therefore, patients with ACS should undergo early risk stratification, for which various risk calculation tools are available. However, it remains uncertain whether the predictive performance varies over time between risk calculation tools for different target periods.

Case of catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation in a very young patient without structural heart disease.

The patient was an 18-year-old man who suffered frequent supraventricular premature complexes (SVPCs) and atrial fibrillation. Catheter ablation was performed, and the left pulmonary vein had been isolated, although firing from within the left inferior pulmonary vein remained. After that, the patient did not exhibit SVPCs and atrial fibrillation.

Compressive forces driven by lateral actin fibers are a key to the nuclear deformation under uniaxial cell-substrate stretching.

Cells sense the direction of mechanical stimuli including substrate stretching and show morphological and functional responses. The nuclear deformation with respect to the direction of mechanical stimuli is thought of as a vital factor in mechanosensitive intracellular signaling and gene transcription, but the detailed relationship between the direction of stimuli and nuclear deformation behavior is not fully solved yet. Here, we assessed the role of actin cytoskeletons in nuclear deformation caused by cell substrate stretching with different directions.