Background: The relationship between the extent and severity of stress-induced ischemia and the extent and severity of anatomic coronary artery disease (CAD) in patients with obstructive CAD is multifactorial and includes the intensity of stress achieved, type of testing used, presence and extent of prior infarction, collateral blood flow, plaque characteristics, microvascular disease, coronary vasomotor tone, and genetic factors. Among chronic coronary disease participants with site-determined moderate or severe ischemia, we investigated associations between ischemia severity on stress testing and the extent of CAD on coronary computed tomography angiography.
Methods: Clinically indicated stress testing included nuclear imaging, echocardiography, cardiac magnetic resonance imaging, or nonimaging exercise tolerance test.
Gram-negative pathogens pose a significant threat due to their propensity for causing various infections, often coupled with formidable resistance to conventional antibiotic treatments. The development of antivirulence (AV) compounds emerges as a promising alternative strategy by disrupting virulence mechanisms rather than targeting bacterial viability. Aurodox has exhibited promising AV properties in previous studies by blocking the expression and function of the LEE-encoded type 3 secretion system (T3SS) in enterohaemorrhagic , an injectosome that translocates effector proteins directly into host target cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Oral anticoagulation for adults with atrial fibrillation or atrial flutter (AFF) who are at elevated stroke risk reduces the incidence of ischemic stroke but remains underused. Efforts to increase anticoagulation initiation on emergency department (ED) discharge have yielded conflicting results.
Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of a multipronged intervention supporting anticoagulation initiation for eligible adult ED patients.
Natural products - small molecules generated by organisms to facilitate ecological interactions - are of great importance to society and are used as antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal and anticancer drugs. However, the role and evolution of these molecules and the fitness benefits they provide to their hosts in their natural habitat remain an outstanding question. In bacteria, the genes that encode the biosynthetic proteins that generate these molecules are organised into discrete loci termed biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Whether revascularisation (REV) improves outcomes in patients with three-vessel coronary artery disease (3V-CAD) is uncertain.
Aims: Our objective was to evaluate outcomes with REV (percutaneous coronary intervention [PCI] or coronary artery bypass graft surgery [CABG]) versus medical therapy in patients with 3V-CAD.
Methods: ISCHEMIA participants with 3V-CAD on coronary computed tomography angiography without prior CABG were included.
The ability of the attaching and effacing pathogens enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) and Citrobacter rodentium to overcome colonisation resistance is reliant on a type 3 secretion system used to intimately attach to the colonic epithelium. This crucial virulence factor is encoded on a pathogenicity island known as the Locus of Enterocyte Effacement (LEE) but its expression is regulated by several core-genome encoded transcription factors. Here, we unveil that the core transcription factor PdhR, traditionally known as a regulator of central metabolism in response to cellular pyruvate levels, is a key activator of the LEE.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNon-small cell lung cancers (NSCLC) harboring common mutations in EGFR and KRAS characteristically respond transiently to targeted therapies against those mutations, but invariably, tumors recur and progress. Resistance often emerges through mutations in the therapeutic target or activation of alternative signaling pathways. Mechanisms of acute tumor cell resistance to initial EGFR (EGFRi) or KRAS (G12Ci) pathway inhibition remain poorly understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe opening session of the 2023 International Federation of Placenta Associations meeting included a powerful patient perspective from invited guest Dawn Mark about her experience with preeclampsia and stillbirth. As part of this issue of Trophoblast Research we invited Dawn to provide this in written form, to more widely share her important message. Her children's names have been changed to protect privacy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Health care is a strongly universal right across European welfare states; however, social inequalities in health persist. This literature argues that health care organization is an important but overlooked determinant of social inequalities in health, as health systems buffer or amplify structural and individual health determinants. The Client-Centered Coordination Platform (3CP) model offers integrated health access to people with severe mental illness, through core groups of professionals from across health and social services.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Defibrillation in the critical first minutes of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) can significantly improve survival. However, timely access to automated external defibrillators (AEDs) remains a barrier.
Objectives: The authors estimated the impact of a statewide program for drone-delivered AEDs in North Carolina integrated into emergency medical service and first responder (FR) response for OHCA.
Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) occurs in nearly 350,000 people each year in the United States (US). Despite advances in pre and in-hospital care, OHCA survival remains low and is highly variable across systems and regions. The critical barrier to improving cardiac arrest outcomes is not a lack of knowledge about effective interventions, but rather the widespread lack of systems of care to deliver interventions known to be successful.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAims: Emergency department (ED) providers play an important role in the management of patients with acute heart failure (AHF). We present findings from a pilot study of an electronic decision support that includes personalized risk estimates using the STRIDE-HF risk tool and tailored recommendations for initiating guideline directed medical therapy (GDMT) among appropriate patients.
Methods: Among ED patients treated for AHF who were discharged from the ED or the ED-based observation unit in two EDs from 1 January 2023 to 31 July 2023, we assess prescriptions to the four classes of GDMT at two intervals: (1) ED arrival and (2) ED discharge.
Background: Patients with heart failure (HF) are a medically complex population with frequent hospitalizations. Downstream health care utilization following primary care delivered by telemedicine compared to in-person is unknown.
Objectives: The purpose of this study was to understand differences in return in-person visits, emergency department (ED) encounters, and hospitalizations following a telemedicine vs an in-person primary care visit for patients with HF seen for a HF-related complaint.
Background: Quantifying the economic burden of cardiovascular disease and stroke over the coming decades may inform policy, health system, and community-level interventions for prevention and treatment.
Methods: We used nationally representative health, economic, and demographic data to project health care costs attributable to key cardiovascular risk factors (hypertension, diabetes, hypercholesterolemia) and conditions (coronary heart disease, stroke, heart failure, atrial fibrillation) through 2050. The human capital approach was used to estimate productivity losses from morbidity and premature mortality due to cardiovascular conditions.
Introduction: The prevalence of iron deficiency and anemia in the setting of modern-day maintenance immunosuppression in pediatric heart transplant (HTx) recipients is unclear. The primary aim was to determine the prevalence of iron deficiency (serum ferritin < 30 ng/mL ± transferrin saturation < 20%) and anemia per World Health Organization diagnostic criteria and associated risk factors.
Methods: Single-center, cross-sectional analysis of 200 consecutive pediatric HTx recipients (<21 years old) from 2005 to 2021.
Background: Noninvasive cardiac testing (NICT) has been associated with decreased long-term risks of major adverse cardiac events (MACEs) among emergency department patients at high coronary risk. It is unclear whether this association extends to patients without evidence of myocardial injury on initial ECG and cardiac troponin testing.
Methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted of patients presenting with chest pain between 2013 and 2019 to 21 emergency departments within an integrated health care system in Northern California, excluding patients with ST-segment-elevation myocardial infarction or myocardial injury by serum troponin testing.
Background: Cassava leaf samples degrade quickly during storage and transportation from distant areas. Proper sampling and efficient, low-cost storage methods are critical for obtaining sufficient quality DNA and RNA for plant virus epidemiology and improving disease control understanding. This is useful when samples are collected from remote areas far from a laboratory or in developing countries where money and materials for virus diagnostics are scarce.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Subarachnoid hemorrhage is typically diagnosed by noncontrast head computed tomography (CT); lumbar puncture is recommended if computed tomography is nondiagnostic, although CT cerebral angiography has been promoted as an alternative to lumbar puncture in this diagnostic pathway. The outcomes of this debate in practice have not been studied.
Objective: To determine whether CT cerebral angiography use has increased in lieu of lumbar puncture among emergency department (ED) patients with headache, with an increase in unruptured intracranial aneurysm detection.
Background: Clinically detected atrial fibrillation (AF) is associated with a significant increase in mortality and other adverse cardiovascular events. Since the advent of effective methods for AF rhythm control, investigators have attempted to determine how much these adverse prognostic AF effects could be mitigated by the restoration of sinus rhythm (SR) and whether the method used mattered.
Methods: The CABANA trial (Catheter Ablation versus Antiarrhythmic Drug Therapy for Atrial Fibrillation) randomized 2204 AF patients to ablation versus drug therapy, of which 1240 patients were monitored in follow-up using the CABANA ECG rhythm monitoring system.