Rapidly rule out acute myocardial infarction by combining copeptin and heart-type fatty acid-binding protein with cardiac troponin.

Background: The rapid exclusion of acute myocardial infarction in patients with chest pain can reduce the length of hospital admission, prevent unnecessary diagnostic work-up and reduce the burden on our health-care systems. The combined use of biomarkers that are associated with different pathophysiological aspects of acute myocardial infarction could improve the early diagnostic assessment of patients presenting with chest pain.

Methods: We measured cardiac troponin I, copeptin and heart-type fatty acid-binding protein concentrations in 584 patients who presented to the emergency department with acute chest pain.

No cardiac damage after endurance exercise in cardiologists cycling to the European Society of Cardiology meeting in Barcelona.

Aims: There are variable results reported for athletes and potential cardiac damage during exercise. In 2009 a group of cardiologists went by bicycle from the Netherlands to the European Society of Cardiology meeting in Barcelona and collected functional and biochemical parameters during this trip in order to evaluate whether cardiac damage was observed in a group of moderately trained amateur cyclists.

Methods And Results: All of the 20 amateur cyclists (17 men) completed the 1580 km in eight days with an average speed of 27.

Development of contractile dysfunction in rat heart failure: hierarchy of cellular events.

The cellular mechanisms underlying the development of congestive heart failure (HF) are not well understood. Accordingly, we studied myocardial function in isolated right ventricular trabeculae from rats in which HF was induced by left ventricular myocardial infarction (MI). Both early-stage (12 wk post-MI; E-pMI) and late, end-stage HF (28 wk post-Mi; L-pMI) were studied.