Prognostic role of flow-mediated dilatation of the brachial artery in hypertensive patients.

Background: The prognostic role of endothelial dysfunction, as evaluated by flow-mediated vasodilatation of the brachial artery, has been demonstrated in patients at very high risk. We aimed to investigate whether flow-mediated vasodilatation predicts cardiovascular events in uncomplicated hypertensive patients.

Methods And Results: A total of 172 prospectively identified uncomplicated hypertensive patients (age 56 +/- 8 years, 41% women, 48 with diabetes mellitus type 2) were studied.

[A crystallographic method in the diagnosis of kidney diseases].

Structural aspects of copper chloride crystallization of the urine of patients with pyelonephritis and glomerulonephritis were studied by electron microscopy. It was found that admixtures of urea, creatinine, potassium and, possibly, sodium contained in the urine of patients initiate the formation of copper chloride crystals of different sizes, their shape changes, dendritic and spherolithic crystallization occurs. Results may be used as supplementary differential diagnostic signs of glomerulonephritis and pyelonephritis.

[Diagnostic possibilities of a crystallographic method in pyelonephritis in children].

Diagnostic potentialities of the crystallo-optic++ analysis of cupric chloride crystallographs++ were studied in 76 children with pyelonephritis and in 50 children with glomerulonephritis. The structural and morphological characteristics of cupric chloride crystallization under the influence of the urine from children with pyelo- and glomerulonephritis may serve as the additional differential-diagnostic signs of the diseases. The use of raster electron microscopy widens the diagnostic potentialities of the crystallographic method.