MicroRNA-29 in aortic dilation: implications for aneurysm formation.

Rationale: Aging represents a major risk factor for coronary artery disease and aortic aneurysm formation. MicroRNAs (miRs) have emerged as key regulators of biological processes, but their role in age-associated vascular pathologies is unknown.

Objective: We aim to identify miRs in the vasculature that are regulated by age and play a role in age-induced vascular pathologies.

Effects of transcendental meditation in veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom with posttraumatic stress disorder: a pilot study.

We conducted an uncontrolled pilot study to determine whether transcendental meditation (TM) might be helpful in treating veterans from Operation Enduring Freedom or Operation Iraqi Freedom with combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Five veterans were trained in the technique and followed for 12 weeks. All subjects improved on the primary outcome measure, the Clinician Administered PTSD Scale (mean change score, 31.

Calcineurin splicing variant calcineurin Aβ1 improves cardiac function after myocardial infarction without inducing hypertrophy.

Background: Calcineurin is a calcium-regulated phosphatase that plays a major role in cardiac hypertrophy. We previously described that alternative splicing of the calcineurin Aβ (CnAβ) gene generates the CnAβ1 isoform, with a unique C-terminal region that is different from the autoinhibitory domain present in all other CnA isoforms. In skeletal muscle, CnAβ1 is necessary for myoblast proliferation and stimulates regeneration, reducing fibrosis and accelerating the resolution of inflammation.

IGF-1Ea induces vessel formation after injury and mediates bone marrow and heart cross-talk through the expression of specific cytokines.

The aim of this study was to investigate whether supplemental IGF-1Ea transgene expression induces activation of local cardiac and bone marrow stem cell population to mediate mammalian heart repair. In physiologic conditions, cardiac overexpression of the IGF-1Ea propeptide is associated with an enrichment of c-Kit/Sca-1 positive side population cells in the bone marrow and the occurrence of an endothelial-primed CD34 positive side population in the heart. This cellular profile is shown here to correlate with the expression of cytokines involved in stem cell mobilization and vessel formation.

Zonisamide for Bipolar Depression: A Randomized, Double Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Adjunctive Trial.

Objective: This is the first multicenter, double blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of adjunctive zonisamide for the treatment of bipolar depression.

Experimental Design: One hundred two patients with bipolar disorder, type I or II in the depressed phase of illness were randomized to either adjunctive zonisamide or placebo. The study consisted of three phases, a 7 to 30 day screening and stabilization phase, 6 weeks of blinded treatment and a 1 to 3 week discontinuation phase.

Erosion of an Amplatzer septal occluder device into the aortic root.

Atrial septal defects can be closed surgically or percutaneously. We report a patient who underwent percutaneous closure of an atrial septal defect with an Amplatzer septal occluder device (AGA Medical Corp, Golden Valley, MN). The patient presented 4 months later with congestive heart failure secondary to an erosion of the Amplatzer septal occluder into the aortic root.

The impact of an eccentric intravascular ImageWire during coronary optical coherence tomography imaging.

Aims: Optical coherence tomography (OCT) provides high-resolution imaging which enables characterisation of atherosclerosis and vascular response to injury, but to ensure optimal analysis, one must realise potential sources of image distortion. We designed a series of analyses, using coronary stents as a model, to investigate the influence of wire position on OCT-derived vascular images.

Methods And Results: The study evaluated intracoronary OCT images from the Cardialysis-Cleveland University Hospitals Cardiovascular Imaging Core Laboratories database.

Insulin-like growth factor-1 overexpression in cardiomyocytes diminishes ex vivo heart functional recovery after acute ischemia.

Background: Acute insulin-like growth factor-1 administration has been shown to have beneficial effects in cardiac pathological conditions. The aim of the present study was to assess the structural and ex vivo functional impacts of long-term cardiomyocyte-specific insulin-like growth factor-1 overexpression in hearts of transgenic αMHC-IGF-1 Ea mice.

Methods: Performance of isolated transgenic αMHC-IGF-1 Ea and littermate wild-type control hearts was compared under baseline conditions and in response to 20-min ischemic insult.

A report on the piloting of a novel computer-based medical case simulation for teaching and formative assessment of diagnostic laboratory testing.

Objectives: Insufficient attention has been given to how information from computer-based clinical case simulations is presented, collected, and scored. Research is needed on how best to design such simulations to acquire valid performance assessment data that can act as useful feedback for educational applications. This report describes a study of a new simulation format with design features aimed at improving both its formative assessment feedback and educational function.

Cre recombinase resources for conditional mouse mutagenesis.

Large scale international activities for systematic conditional mouse mutagenesis, exploiting advances in the sophisticated manipulation of the mouse genome, has established the mouse as the premier organism for developing models of human disease and drug action. Conditional mutagenesis is critical for the elucidation of the gene functions that exert pleiotropic effects in a variety of cell types and tissues throughout the life of the animal. The majority of new mouse mutants are therefore designed as conditional, activated only in a specific tissue (spatial control) and/or life stage (temporal control) through biogenic Cre/loxP technologies.

Zonisamide for bipolar disorder, mania or mixed states: a randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled adjunctive trial.

Objective: This is the first multicenter, double blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of adjunctive zonisamide for the treatment of bipolar mania or mixed state.

Experimental Design: One hundred four patients with Bipolar Disorder, Type I, II or NOS, in a manic, hypomanic or mixed state of illness were randomized to either adjunctive zonisamide or placebo. The study consisted of three phases: a 7 to 30 day screening and stabilization phase, 6 weeks of blinded treatment and a 1 to 3 week discontinuation phase.

Silencing of a putative inner arm dynein heavy chain results in flagellar immotility in Trypanosoma brucei.

The Trypanosoma brucei flagellum controls motility and is crucial for cell polarity and division. Unique features of trypanosome motility suggest that flagellar beat regulation in this organism is unusual and worthy of study. The flagellar axoneme, required for motility, has a structure that is highly conserved among eukaryotes.

Regulation of muscle atrophy in aging and disease.

Muscle aging is characterized by a decline in functional performance and restriction of adaptability, due to progressive loss of muscle tissue coupled with a decrease in strength and force output. Together with selective activation ofapoptotic pathways, a hallmark of age-related muscle loss or sarcopenia is the progressive incapacity of regeneration machinery to replace damaged muscle. These characteristics are shared by pathologies involving muscle wasting, such as muscular dystrophies or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, cancer and AIDS, all characterized by alterations in metabolic and physiological parameters, progressive weakness in specific muscle groups.

Nighttime hospital blood pressure--a predictor of death, ESRD, and decline in GFR.

Nighttime systolic blood pressure (BP) from ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) is more predictive than clinic BP for cardiovascular disease, stroke, and death even after controlling for clinic BP. However, ABPM is expensive and burdensome to obtain regularly. BPs obtained in the hospital may provide a window into nighttime BP.

Assessing Adolescents' Attachment Hierarchies: Differences Across Developmental Periods and Associations With Individual Adaptation.

Adolescents' attachment hierarchies were assessed in a sample of 212 high school and 198 college students. The Important People Interview (IPI) differentiated attachment bonds from other supportive or affiliative relationships and indicated that adolescents show a hierarchical ordering of preferences for multiple attachment figures. Differences in the composition and structure of adolescents' attachment hierarchies were found between the early high school (9(th) and 10(th) grades), later high school (11(th) and 12(th) grades), and college samples.

Angiographic, IVUS and OCT evaluation of the long-term impact of coronary disease severity at the site of overlapping drug-eluting and bare metal stents: a substudy of the ODESSA trial.

Background: A potentially adverse vascular response to overlapping drug eluting stents (DES) has been suggested in current research.

Objective: To evaluate the impact of baseline disease severity at the site of stent overlap.

Methods And Results: This is a substudy of ODESSA, a prospective, randomised controlled trial designed to evaluate healing of overlapping stents.

Short exposure to light treatment improves depression scores in patients with seasonal affective disorder: A brief report.

Light therapy is an effective treatment of seasonal affective disorder (SAD), when administered daily for at least several weeks. We have previously reported a small improvement in mood in SAD patients following exposure to the first hour of treatment. We now reevaluate retrospectively mood changes during shorter exposures comparing depression ratings at baseline, 20, 40, and 60 minutes of light.

An unnatural history of left ventricular pseudoaneurysm?

We report the case of a 79-year-old woman with a history of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia and purulent pericarditis with subsequent subxiphoid pericardiostomy and formation of a large left ventricular pseudoaneurysm (LVPA) that has been medically managed. Long-term survival after pseudoaneurysm formation has traditionally been thought to be unusual without operative intervention. Computed tomography (CT), three-dimensional reconstructed CT, and echocardiographic images documenting the progression of the LVPA are presented over the course of the patient's follow-up.

Finding and sharing: new approaches to registries of databases and services for the biomedical sciences.

The recent explosion of biological data and the concomitant proliferation of distributed databases make it challenging for biologists and bioinformaticians to discover the best data resources for their needs, and the most efficient way to access and use them. Despite a rapid acceleration in uptake of syntactic and semantic standards for interoperability, it is still difficult for users to find which databases support the standards and interfaces that they need. To solve these problems, several groups are developing registries of databases that capture key metadata describing the biological scope, utility, accessibility, ease-of-use and existence of web services allowing interoperability between resources.

Mouse Resource Browser--a database of mouse databases.

The laboratory mouse has become the organism of choice for discovering gene function and unravelling pathogenetic mechanisms of human diseases through the application of various functional genomic approaches. The resulting deluge of data has led to the deployment of numerous online resources and the concomitant need for formalized experimental descriptions, data standardization, database interoperability and integration, a need that has yet to be met. We present here the Mouse Resource Browser (MRB), a database of mouse databases that indexes 217 publicly available mouse resources under 22 categories and uses a standardised database description framework (the CASIMIR DDF) to provide information on their controlled vocabularies (ontologies and minimum information standards), and technical information on programmatic access and data availability.

Revealing new mouse epicardial cell markers through transcriptomics.

Background: The epicardium has key functions during myocardial development, by contributing to the formation of coronary endothelial and smooth muscle cells, cardiac fibroblasts, and potentially cardiomyocytes. The epicardium plays a morphogenetic role by emitting signals to promote and maintain cardiomyocyte proliferation. In a regenerative context, the adult epicardium might comprise a progenitor cell population that can be induced to contribute to cardiac repair.

Serum and glucocorticoid-inducible kinase 1 (SGK1) is necessary for vascular remodeling during angiogenesis.

The unquestionable importance of the cardiovascular system for pre- and postnatal life has prompted dissection of the molecular mechanisms underlying its development. Serum and glucocorticoid-inducible kinase 1 (SGK1) is a serine/threonine kinase lying downstream of the phosphoinositide 3 (PI3) kinase pathway, whose embryonic function remains unknown. Here, we show that disruption of Sgk1 in the mouse C57BL/6J genetic background leads to embryonic lethality at embryonic day 10.

High-throughput applicable genomic sex typing of chicken by TaqMan real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction.

Genetic sex typing of vertebrate animals is an essential technique for research on reproductive phenomena such as sex determination of embryonic tissues. Polymerase chain reaction amplification of genomic DNA segments in the Z and W sex chromosomes has been widely used as a standard laboratory method to determine genetic sex of the chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus). However, conventional protocols for PCR determination of avian sex typically involve tedious steps of genomic DNA isolation, which often require relatively large amounts of tissue samples, and the purity of genomic DNA specimens significantly affects PCR efficiency.

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) strut-level analysis of drug-eluting stents (DES) in human coronary bifurcations.

Aims: We sought to evaluate the vascular response of stent struts deployed in bifurcation segments using optical coherence tomography (OCT).

Methods And Results: This study is a sub-analysis of ODESSA, a prospective randomised trial designed to evaluate healing of overlapped drug-eluting stents (DES) vs. bare metal stents (BMS) (sirolimus SES: paclitaxel PES: zotarolimus ZES: Liberté BMS in a 2: 2: 2: 1 ratio) for de novo coronary artery stenosis.