Reference intervals for glycated albumin during physiological pregnancy of Europid women: Evidences from a prospective observational study.

Background And Aims: Glycated albumin (GA) may assess glycometabolic control over a short period of time respect to HbA, and its use to screen for gestational diabetes in pregnancy has been suggested. To this regard few data on reference intervals (RI) for GA on Europid women have been collected, only from cross-sectional investigations. Aim of this work has been to collect trimester-specific RI for GA in physiological pregnancies, following a longitudinal prospective study.

Depression in vascular pathologies: the neurologist's point of view.

The coexistence of depression and cardiovascular disease (CVD) is regularly discussed, and much debated. There is strong evidence that there are pathophysiological mechanisms, particularly endothelial dysfunction, altered platelet aggregation, and hyperactivation of the thrombosis cascade, which coexist with hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis dysfunction, and link depression to CVD. Therefore, depression should not be automatically considered to be a consequence of life impairment due to myocardial infarction or major stroke.

The role of the angiotensin system in cardiac glucose homeostasis: therapeutic implications.

Resistance to the metabolic actions of insulin is thought to play a determining role in the aetiology of a great variety of disorders, including essential hypertension, accelerated atherosclerosis and cardiomyopathies. ACE inhibitors are recognised as being highly effective therapy for hypertension and cardiac insufficiency, and have a more beneficial effect on survival rate than expected on the basis of known mechanisms of action. The mechanism responsible for these extremely positive effects are just beginning to be understood and appear to be linked to the effects these drugs have on metabolism.