An atypical course of myasthenia gravis.

Myasthenia gravis (MG) is a chronic neuromuscular disease which leads to varying degrees of weakness in the skeletal muscles. Some of the symptoms of the disorder include weakness of the eye muscles, difficulty in swallowing and slurred speech. When only the muscles of the eyes are affected, the illness is termed ocular myasthenia, which is often characterized by abrupt onset of diplopia and ptosis of the eyelid.

Platelet aggregation inhibition in patients receiving statins either fully or partially metabolized by CYP3A4.

Clopidogrel therapy is the standard for prevention of cardiovascular thrombotic events. Clopidogrel is converted to an active thiol by the cytochrome P450 CYP 3A4 and 2C19 enzymes. Recent studies suggest that statins metabolized by CYP3A4 attenuate the anti-aggregatory effect of clopidogrel.

Efficacy of rheolytic thrombectomy in early versus late myocardial infarction.

Background: Rheolytic thrombectomy has been used successfully to treat acutely occluded lower-limb vessels, dialysis grafts, intrahepatic portosystemic shunts, and diseased native coronary vessels and saphenous vein grafts. Few studies, however, have examined the efficacy of rheolytic thrombectomy in the acute myocardial infarction (AMI) setting. We sought to determine the efficacy of the AngioJet Rheolytic thrombectomy catheter (Possis Medical, Minneapolis, MN, USA) in patients presenting with AMI either before or after 12 hours of onset of symptoms.

Coronary artery diameter as a risk factor for acute coronary syndromes in Asian-Indians.

Asian-Indians have high rates of coronary artery disease (CAD), which also occurs at an earlier age, with 50% of all heart attacks occurring in patients <55 years old and 25% in those <40 years old. Previous studies have cited structural factors in Asian-Indians, specifically smaller coronary arteries, as the cause of increased CAD in this population. We found that Asian-Indian patients have smaller coronary arteries, with a statistically significant difference in the mean diameter even after correction for body surface area.