Publications by authors named "N A Boon"
Background: The Scottish Computed Tomography of the Heart (SCOT-HEART) trial demonstrated that management guided by coronary CT angiography (CCTA) improved the diagnosis, management, and outcome of patients with stable chest pain. We aimed to assess whether CCTA-guided care results in sustained long-term improvements in management and outcomes.
Methods: SCOT-HEART was an open-label, multicentre, parallel group trial for which patients were recruited from 12 outpatient cardiology chest pain clinics across Scotland.
Article Synopsis
- The study examines the effectiveness of flow cytometry as a quick and cost-effective method for determining the composition of synthetic bacterial communities compared to traditional methods like bacterial plating, strain-specific qPCR, and 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing.
- Flow cytometry showed a lower average error when quantifying the composition of axenic cultures and mock communities, outperforming both PCR-based methods and sequencing.
- However, when bacteria were co-cultured, the accuracy of all methods decreased, highlighting the difficulties in accurately quantifying community composition due to the changing phenotypes of the bacteria.
Importance: Development of myocardial fibrosis in patients with aortic stenosis precedes left ventricular decompensation and is associated with an adverse long-term prognosis.
Objective: To investigate whether early valve intervention reduced the incidence of all-cause death or unplanned aortic stenosis-related hospitalization in asymptomatic patients with severe aortic stenosis and myocardial fibrosis.
Design, Setting, And Participants: This prospective, randomized, open-label, masked end point trial was conducted between August 2017 and October 2022 at 24 cardiac centers across the UK and Australia.
Article Synopsis
- Increased interest in hydrocarbonoclastic bacteria, particularly the genus Alcanivorax, has been observed in relation to plastic degradation in the plastisphere.
- This study investigated Alcanivorax's role in the colonization and biodegradation of various plastics, revealing high microbial growth associated with total plastics compared to their fractions.
- The findings suggest that Alcanivorax, particularly in nylon 6/69, plays a significant role in the early stages of plastic degradation, enhancing our understanding of bacterial contributions in plastic-rich environments.
Article Synopsis
- Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), like zeolites, are crystalline materials with channels that can effectively adsorb environmental contaminants.
- In this study, a zirconium MOF called UiO-66 was modified with ferrocene to enhance the selective removal of oxyanions such as nitrate (NO), sulfate (SO), and phosphate (PO) from contaminated mixtures.
- The research found that the functionalized MOF exhibited a strong preference for phosphate ions over other contaminants, with the preference linked to the interaction of oxyanions with positively charged sites within the material's pores and the strong bonding to zirconium nodes.