Acute dyspnea caused by hypocalcemia-related laryngospasm.

Background: Laryngospasm is a rare cause of stridor in adults, and laryngospasm due to hypocalcemia is an unusual finding.

Case Report: We present a case of an adult woman with acute dyspnea. A week prior to presentation, she experienced short episodes of a pinching feeling in her throat and difficulty breathing.

Self-reported time spent watching television is associated with arterial stiffness in young adults: the Amsterdam Growth and Health Longitudinal Study.

Objectives: To investigate whether time spent watching television (a marker of sedentary behaviour) is associated with arterial stiffness, a major determinant of cardiovascular disease, and whether any such association could be explained by related deleterious levels of habitual physical activity (HPA) and/or other lifestyle and biological risk factors.

Methods: Prospective measures (ages 32 and 36 years) of television time and risk factors were retrieved from 373 participants (196 women) in whom stiffness of the carotid, brachial and femoral arteries was assessed by means of ultrasonography at age 36 years. Data were analysed with generalised estimating equations.

Lower lifetime dietary fiber intake is associated with carotid artery stiffness: the Amsterdam Growth and Health Longitudinal Study.

Background: Fiber intake is associated with lower cardiovascular disease risk. Whether arterial stiffness is influenced by lifetime fiber intake is not known. Any such association could explain, at least in part, the cardioprotective effects attributed to fiber intake.

The change in arterial stiffness over the cardiac cycle rather than diastolic stiffness is independently associated with left ventricular mass index in healthy middle-aged individuals.

Background: The current standard for arterial stiffness assessment, aortic pulse wave velocity (aPWV), is measured at diastolic pressure. Arterial stiffness, however, is pressure dependent. At the carotid artery level, the degree of this dependency can be quantified as the difference (ΔPWV) between systolic and diastolic (cPWVd) carotid pulse wave velocity.

Carotid stiffness in young adults: a life-course analysis of its early determinants: the Amsterdam Growth and Health Longitudinal Study.

Cardiovascular risk factors affecting arterial stiffness in adulthood may develop at different critical periods earlier in life. We examined whether the trajectories, from adolescence to young adulthood, of blood pressure, body fatness and fat distribution, blood lipids, cardiorespiratory fitness, and heart rate determined levels of arterial stiffness in young adults. We investigated 373 apparently healthy adults in whom cardiovascular risk factors were repeatedly examined between the ages of 13 and 36 years and carotid stiffness estimates were obtained at the age of 36 years.

Continuing smoking between adolescence and young adulthood is associated with higher arterial stiffness in young adults: the Northern Ireland Young Hearts Project.

Objectives: To investigate the associations between smoking in adolescence and adulthood, and changes in smoking behaviour between these age periods, with arterial stiffness in young adults; and whether any such associations could be explained by concomitant smoking-related levels of inflammation and endothelial dysfunction.

Methods: We studied 424 individuals (216 women) in whom smoking status was assessed in adolescence (age 15 years) and again in young adulthood (mean age of 22.6 ± 1.

Habitual physical activity and peripheral arterial compliance in young adults: the Amsterdam growth and health longitudinal study.

Background: It remains unclear whether the impact of habitual physical activity (HPA) differs for central vs. peripheral arterial stiffness, both of which are detrimental to cardiovascular health. We investigated the associations of lifetime HPA of different intensities on brachial and femoral stiffness in young adults, and compared these with those previously obtained for the carotid artery in the same study population.

Lifetime vigorous but not light-to-moderate habitual physical activity impacts favorably on carotid stiffness in young adults: the amsterdam growth and health longitudinal study.

Higher levels of habitual physical activity favorably impact on arterial stiffness. It is not clear, however, whether lifetime habitual physical activities of different intensities carry the same protective effect and to what extent any such effect is mediated by other biological cardiovascular risk factors. We, therefore, examined longitudinal data on habitual physical activity and cardiovascular risk factors (8 repeated measures between the ages of 13 and 36 years) in 373 subjects in whom stiffness estimates of the carotid artery were assessed at age 36 years using noninvasive ultrasonography.