Electrophysiological efficacy of temperature-controlled bipolar radiofrequency†

OBJECTIVE Clinical success of atrial fibrillation (AF) ablation depends on persistent block of electrical conduction across the ablation lines. The fate of ablations performed with temperature-controlled bipolar radiofrequency (RF) is unknown. The purpose of this study was to validate the electrophysiological (EP) efficacy of these lesions, recording pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) after open chest ablation, in the human being. METHODS Ten consecutive mitral patients (mean age: 53 ± 12 years) with concomitant AF were treated with the Cobra Revolution (Estech, San Ramon, CA, USA) bipolar RF device were enrolled for EP assessment. During surgery, pairs of additional temporary wires were positioned on the right PVs (RPV) and on the roof of the left atrium (RLA), before ablation. Pacing thresholds (PTs) were assessed before, after a single encircling ablation and at chest's closure. EP study was repeated before discharge and at 3 weeks. RLA wires served as control. RESULTS Baseline PTs were 0.83 ± 0.81 mA (range 0.2-3 mA) from RPV and 1.13 ± 0.78 mA (range 0.3-3 mA) from RLA. PVI was reached in all patients acutely, and was maintained at 1 week. At 3 weeks, the PTs were 14.3 ± 4.3 mA from RPV (range 7-20 mA) and 3.1 ± 1.3 mA (range 1.5-7 mA) from RLA. All patients were discharged in sinus rhythm. CONCLUSIONS Cobra Revolution temperature-controlled bipolar RF provides complete PVI after a single ablation up to 1 week. This notwithstanding, only 30% of patients were completely isolated (exit block validation) at 3 week

Cortical circuitry and synaptic dysfunctions in Alzheimer's Disease and other dementias

No abstract availabl

Maze surgery normalizes left ventricular function in patients with persistent lone atrial fibrillation†

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Sex influences clinical phenotype in frontotemporal dementia

INTRODUCTION: Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) encompasses a wide spectrum of genetic, clinical, and histological findings. Sex is emerging as a potential biological variable influencing FTD heterogeneity; however, only a few studies explored this issue with nonconclusive results. OBJECTIVE: To estimate the role of sex in a single-center large cohort of FTD patients. METHODS: Five hundred thirty-one FTD patients were consecutively enrolled. Demographic, clinical, and neuropsychological features, survival rate, and serum neurofilament light (NfL) concentration were determined and compared between sex. RESULTS: The behavioral variant of FTD was more common in men, whereas primary progressive aphasia was overrepresented in women (p < 0.001). While global cognitive impairment was comparable, females had a more severe cognitive impairment, namely in Trail Making Test parts A and B (p = 0.003), semantic fluency (p = 0.03), Short Story Recall Test (p = 0.003), and the copy of Rey Complex Figure (p = 0.005). On the other hand, men exhibited more personality/behavioral symptoms (Frontal Behavior Inventory [FBI] AB, p = 0.003), displaying higher scores in positive FBI subscales (FBI B, p < 0.001). In particular, apathy (p = 0.02), irritability (p = 0.006), poor judgment (p = 0.033), aggressivity (p = 0.008), and hypersexuality (p = 0.006) were more common in men, after correction for disease severity. NfL concentration and survival were not statistically different between men and women (p = 0.167 and p = 0.645, respectively). DISCUSSION: The present study demonstrated that sex is a potential factor in determining FTD phenotype, while it does not influence survival. Although the pathophysiological contribution of sex in neurodegeneration is not well characterized yet, our findings highlight its role as deserving biological variable in FTD

Web-based monitoring tools for Resistive Plate Chambers in the CMS experiment at CERN

The Resistive Plate Chambers (RPC) are used in the CMS experiment at the trigger level and also in the standard offline muon reconstruction. In order to guarantee the quality of the data collected and to monitor online the detector performance, a set of tools has been developed in CMS which is heavily used in the RPC system. The Web-based monitoring (WBM) is a set of java servlets that allows users to check the performance of the hardware during data taking, providing distributions and history plots of all the parameters. The functionalities of the RPC WBM monitoring tools are presented along with studies of the detector performance as a function of growing luminosity and environmental conditions that are tracked over time

Rare mutations in SQSTM1 modify susceptibility to frontotemporal lobar degeneration

Mutations in the gene coding for Sequestosome 1 (SQSTM1) have been genetically associated with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and Paget disease of bone. In the present study, we analyzed the SQSTM1 coding sequence for mutations in an extended cohort of 1,808 patients with frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), ascertained within the European Early-Onset Dementia consortium. As control dataset, we sequenced 1,625 European control individuals and analyzed whole-exome sequence data of 2,274 German individuals (total n = 3,899). Association of rare SQSTM1 mutations was calculated in a meta-analysis of 4,332 FTLD and 10,240 control alleles. We identified 25 coding variants in FTLD patients of which 10 have not been described. Fifteen mutations were absent in the control individuals (carrier frequency < 0.00026) whilst the others were rare in both patients and control individuals. When pooling all variants with a minor allele frequency < 0.01, an overall frequency of 3.2 % was calculated in patients. Rare variant association analysis between patients and controls showed no difference over the whole protein, but suggested that rare mutations clustering in the UBA domain of SQSTM1 may influence disease susceptibility by doubling the risk for FTLD (RR = 2.18 [95 % CI 1.24-3.85]; corrected p value = 0.042). Detailed histopathology demonstrated that mutations in SQSTM1 associate with widespread neuronal and glial phospho-TDP-43 pathology. With this study, we provide further evidence for a putative role of rare mutations in SQSTM1 in the genetic etiology of FTLD and showed that, comparable to other FTLD/ALS genes, SQSTM1 mutations are associated with TDP-43 pathology