Renin angiotensin system inhibitors for patients with stable coronary artery disease without heart failure: systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized trials.

Objective:  To critically evaluate the efficacy of renin angiotensin system inhibitors (RASi) in patients with coronary artery disease without heart failure, compared with active controls or placebo.

Design:  Meta-analysis of randomized trials.

Data Sources:  PubMed, EMBASE, and CENTRAL databases until 1 May 2016.

Diabetes mellitus as a compelling indication for use of renin angiotensin system blockers: systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized trials.

Objective: To evaluate the outcomes with use of renin angiotensin system (RAS) blockers compared with other antihypertensive agents in people with diabetes.

Design: Meta-analysis.

Data Sources And Study Selection: PubMed, Embase, and the Cochrane central register of controlled trials databases for randomized trials of RAS blockers versus other antihypertensive agents in people with diabetes mellitus.

Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme Inhibitors or Angiotensin Receptor Blockers in Patients Without Heart Failure? Insights From 254,301 Patients From Randomized Trials.

Objectives: To compare the efficacy and safety of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEis) and angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) in patients without heart failure.

Patients And Methods: Meta-analysis of randomized trials identified using PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials searches from January 1, 1980, through April 13, 2015, of ACEis and ARBs compared with placebo or active controls and corroborated with head-to-head trials of ARBs vs ACEis. Outcomes were all-cause mortality, cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction (MI), angina, stroke, heart failure, revascularization, and new-onset diabetes.

27-Hydroxycholesterol, does it exist? On the nomenclature and stereochemistry of 26-hydroxylated sterols.

Significant ambiguity exists in the scientific community with regard to the nomenclature of 26-hydroxylated oxysterols. Oxysterols constitute an important class of compounds that have biological roles in the regulation of cholesterol synthesis and as endogenous selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs). The ambiguity is attributable to deviations from clearly stated IUPAC rules and is likely to increase as more biologically active oxysterols are identified.

Ambient temperature as a contributor to kidney stone formation: implications of global warming.

Nephrolithiasis is a common disease across the world that is becoming more prevalent. Although the underlying cause for most stones is not known, a body of literature suggests a role of heat and climate as significant risk factors for lithogenesis. Recently, estimates from computer models predicted up to a 10% increase in the prevalence rate in the next half century secondary to the effects of global warming, with a coinciding 25% increase in health-care expenditures.

Autoregulation of cholesterol synthesis: physiologic and pathophysiologic consequences.

Autoregulation of cholesterol synthesis focuses on the 19 metabolic steps from lanosterol to cholesterol. Although synchronization of their rates of synthesis in all tissues was the paradigm, a known exception occurs in the ovary where a local increase in a sterol intermediate, FF-MAS (follicular fluid meiosis activating sterol), activates meiosis during oocyte maturation. Mutations in the genes that govern synchronization cause an increase in sterol intermediates that follow an alternate, oxysterol, pathway of metabolism.