One-Year Efficacy of Expanded Polytetrafluoroethylene Vascular Graft in Eighty-Three Hemodialysis Patients

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><strong><span style="mso-bidi-language: FA;">Purpose:</span></strong><span style="mso-bidi-language: FA;"> To evaluate the patency and efficacy of expanded Polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE) vascular graft in hemodialysis patients.</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><strong><span style="mso-bidi-language: FA;">Materials and Methods:</span></strong><span style="mso-bidi-language: FA;"> In a prospective study from January 1999 to January 2001 at Sina hospital 41 patients underwent implantation of 6-mm vascular grafts and 42 underwent implantation of 8-mm grafts in order to make vascular assess for hemodialysis. They were followed up to 12 months, observing the complications. </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><strong><span style="mso-bidi-language: FA;">Results:</span></strong><span style="mso-bidi-language: FA;"> Mean patients’ age was 52.2 years. Thirty-seven of them were females and 46 were males. Over a 12 months period of follow-up, 12 cases of graft infection (14.5%), 21 cases of thrombosis (25.3%), 7 cases with both complications (8.4%), and 1 case of pseudoaneurism (1.2%) were observed. One-year patency rate was 34.9%. Diabetes was the only factor associated with lower patency rate (27% versus 57%, p<0.05).</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><strong><span style="mso-bidi-language: FA;">Conclusion:</span></strong><span style="mso-bidi-language: FA;"> ePTFE vascular graft seems to be an appropriate substitute for arteriovenous fistula as a vascular assess in hemodialysis patients. Educating patients and good care can decrease the rate of infection, thrombosis, and other complications, resulting in a better patency and lower morbidity rate.</span></span></span></p&gt

Safety and Feasibility of Long-term Intravenous Sodium Nitrite Infusion in Healthy Volunteers

BACKGROUND: Infusion of sodium nitrite could provide sustained therapeutic concentrations of nitric oxide (NO) for the treatment of a variety of vascular disorders. The study was developed to determine the safety and feasibility of prolonged sodium nitrite infusion. METHODOLOGY: Healthy volunteers, aged 21 to 60 years old, were candidates for the study performed at the National Institutes of Health (NIH; protocol 05-N-0075) between July 2007 and August 2008. All subjects provided written consent to participate. Twelve subjects (5 males, 7 females; mean age, 38.8±9.2 years (range, 21-56 years)) were intravenously infused with increasing doses of sodium nitrite for 48 hours (starting dose at 4.2 µg/kg/hr; maximal dose of 533.8 µg/kg/hr). Clinical, physiologic and laboratory data before, during and after infusion were analyzed. FINDINGS: The maximal tolerated dose for intravenous infusion of sodium nitrite was 267 µg/kg/hr. Dose limiting toxicity occurred at 446 µg/kg/hr. Toxicity included a transient asymptomatic decrease of mean arterial blood pressure (more than 15 mmHg) and/or an asymptomatic increase of methemoglobin level above 5%. Nitrite, nitrate, S-nitrosothiols concentrations in plasma and whole blood increased in all subjects and returned to preinfusion baseline values within 12 hours after cessation of the infusion. The mean half-life of nitrite estimated at maximal tolerated dose was 45.3 minutes for plasma and 51.4 minutes for whole blood. CONCLUSION: Sodium nitrite can be safely infused intravenously at defined concentrations for prolonged intervals. These results should be valuable for developing studies to investigate new NO treatment paradigms for a variety of clinical disorders, including cerebral vasospasm after subarachnoid hemorrhage, and ischemia of the heart, liver, kidney and brain, as well as organ transplants, blood-brain barrier modulation and pulmonary hypertension. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION INFORMATION: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov; NCT00103025

Correlation of Circulating Omentin-1 with Bone Mineral Density in Multiple Sclerosis: The Crosstalk between Bone and Adipose Tissue

BACKGROUND: Patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) are at increased risk of osteoporosis and fractures. Adipose tissue-derived adipokines may play important roles in the osteoimmunology of MS. In order to determine whether omentin-1 and vaspin may be related to bone health in MS patients, we compared circulating levels of these recently identified adipokines, between MS patients and healthy controls. METHODS: A total of 35 ambulatory MS patients with relapsing-remitting courses were compared with 38 age- and sex-matched healthy controls. Bone mineral density (BMD) was determined for the lumbar spine (L2-L4) and the proximal femur using dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry. Circulating omentin-1, vaspin, osteocalcin, osteopontin, osteoprotegerin, the receptor activator of nuclear factor-κB ligand, matrix metalloproteinase 9, C-reactive protein and 25-hydroxy vitamin D levels were evaluated by highly specific enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay methods. RESULTS: There was no significant difference between the two groups regarding bone-related cytokines, adipocytokines, and the BMD measurements of patients with MS and the healthy controls. However, in multiple regression analysis, serum omentin-1 levels were positively correlated with BMD at the femoral neck (β = 0.49, p = 0.016), total hip (β = 0.42, p = 0.035), osteopontin (β = 0.42, p = 0.030) and osteocalcin (β = 0.53, p = 0.004) in MS patients. No correlations were found between vaspin, biochemical, and BMD measures in both groups. CONCLUSIONS: Elevated omentin-1 serum levels are correlated with BMD at the femoral neck and the serum levels of osteocalcin and osteopontin in MS patients. Therefore, there is crosstalk between adipose tissue and bone in MS

Community Willingness to Participate in a Dengue Study in Aceh Province, Indonesia

Background: Dengue virus infection is the most rapidly spreading vector-borne disease in the world. Essential research on dengue virus transmission and its prevention requires community participation. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the factors that are associated with the willingness of communities in high prevalence areas to participate in dengue research. The aim of this study was to explore factors associated with the willingness of healthy community members in Aceh province, Indonesia, to participate in dengue research that would require phlebotomy. Methodology/Principal Findings: A community-based cross-sectional study was carried out in nine regencies and municipalities of Aceh from November 2014 to March 2015. Interviews using a set of validated questionnaires were conducted to collect data on demography, history of dengue infection, socioeconomic status, and knowledge, attitude and practice regarding dengue fever. Two-step logistic regression and Spearman's rank correlation (rs) analysis were used to assess the influence of independent variables on dependent variables. Among 535 participants, less than 20% had a good willingness to participate in the dengue study. The factors associated with good willingness to participate were being female, working as a civil servant, private employee or entrepreneur, having a high socioeconomic status and good knowledge, attitude and practice regarding dengue. Good knowledge and attitude regarding dengue were positive independent predictors of willingness to participate (OR: 2.30 [95% CI: 1.36-3.90] and 3.73 [95% CI: 2.24-6.21], respectively). Conclusion/Significance: The willingness to participate in dengue research is very low among community members in Aceh, and the two most important associated factors are knowledge and attitude regarding dengue. To increase participation rate, efforts to improve the knowledge and attitude of community members regarding dengue fever and dengue-related research is required before such studies are launched

Exprimental effect of using silica fume and fly ash on mechanical properties of recycled concretes

This paper presents the results of a laboratory study on the mechanical performance of recycled concretes prepared with incorporation of two mineral admixtures including silica fume (SF) and fly ash (FA). The recycled aggregates concrete (RAC) was prepared by using 0, 25, 50 and 100% coarse aggregate replacement. The compressive strength, splitting tensile strength (SPT) and ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV) of concrete mixes were completed. The results showed that the pozzolanic materials cannot have a significant effect on compressive strength loss trend. In contrast, the ultimate compressive strength of recycled concretes strongly effected by pozzolanic materials. The SPT and UPV test results showed that compare with FA, the use of SF reduced the negative effect of high replaced percentage of recycled aggregates

Predicting Water Pipe Failures with a Recurrent Neural Hawkes Process Model

Water distribution networks have shown an increased rate of failure due to material deterioration. In this paper, we apply a Recurrent Neural Hawkes Process model to learn the failure intensity function of water pipes. The failure intensity function is learned based on two components: the base failure rate that is determined by the unique pipe profile attributes, and the effect of past failures. Compared to the existing solutions, our model is able to predict the time to next failure on an individual water pipe level. The learned failure intensity function is used to identify value points in the deterioration process of water pipes that represent their economical end-of-life. We use data from a Dutch water distribution network that consists of 49,600 km of pipelines to test the performance of the proposed model. We have made this dataset available online