Association of heart rate recovery with microalbuminuria in non-obstructive coronary artery disease

Background: Non-obstructive coronary artery disease (CAD) is associated with significantly increased risk for myocardial infarction. Heart rate recovery (HRR), a measure of autonomic function, is a strong predictor of all-cause mortality. Microalbuminuria, a marker of early arterial disease, is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease and mortality. We aimed to investigate HRR and determine its relationship with microalbuminuria in patients with non-obstructive CAD.Methods: We prospectively studied 565 patients who underwent elective coronary angiography. All participants underwent urinary analysis and then an exercise test. Microalbuminuria was defined as an urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio (UACR) of 30 -299 mg/g. The HRR was abnormal if 12 beats/min, n = 439).Results: Patients with microalbuminuria had lower HRR and patients with lower HRR had higher UACR. While UACR was negatively correlated with HRR in patients with microalbuminuria (r = -0.424; P < 0.001) and in patients with lower HRR (r = -0.192; P = 0.042), there was no correlation of UACR with HRR in neither patients with normoalbuminuria nor patients with higher HRR, respectively. In the all study population, there was a significant inverse association between UACR and HRR (r = -0.445, P < 0.001), and UACR independently predicted the presence of lower HRR (P < 0.001).Conclusions: Our findings showed that there was a significant inverse association between UACR and HRR in patients especially with microalbuminuria, and that albuminuria might predict cardiac autonomic imbalance evaluated by HRR in patients with non-obstructive CAD

Parents' knowledge and behaviour concerning sunning their babies; a cross-sectional, descriptive study

BACKGROUND: For centuries, sunlight has been used for therapeutic purposes. Parents still sun their infants to treat neonatal jaundice, nappy rash or mostly to supply vitamin D for bone development as a consequence of health beliefs. In this study we aimed to assess knowledge and behaviour of parents about benefits of sunlight and sun protection. METHODS: In this study, parents attending to governmental primary healthcare units for their children's routine vaccinations, upon their informed consent, were consecutively enrolled during one month. Data were collected by a semi-structured questionnaire. RESULTS: The mean age of 118 enrolled parents and their babies were 27.9 ± 6.5 years and 8.3 ± 5.8 months, respectively. Most of the participants were mothers (93.2%), housewives (81.4%) with an educational level of ≥6 years (71.2%). Sunlight was considered beneficial for bone development (86.4%), diaper rash (5.9%) and neonatal jaundice (12.7%). In case of neonatal jaundice 72.0% of the participants reported that they would consult a physician. Most of the participants (82.2%) were sunning their babies outdoors. Nearly half (49.7%) of them got this information from medical staff. Fifty two percent of the parents were sunning their babies before 10–11 a.m. and/or after 3 p.m. Only 13.6% of parents reported using sunscreen for their babies, and the majority of them were using sun protecting factor ≥ 15. One forth of the sunscreen users was using sunscreen according to their physicians' advice. CONCLUSION: Most of the participants were aware of the benefits of sunlight; especially for bone development. However they were displaying inappropriate behaviour while sunning their babies for health reasons. More education should be given to parents about the danger of sunlight at primary health care units while advising to sun their babies, if any

A Novel Intravital Method to Evaluate Cerebral Vasospasm in Rat Models of Subarachnoid Hemorrhage: A Study with Synchrotron Radiation Angiography

Precise in vivo evaluation of cerebral vasospasm caused by subarachnoid hemorrhage has remained a critical but unsolved issue in experimental small animal models. In this study, we used synchrotron radiation angiography to study the vasospasm of anterior circulation arteries in two subarachnoid hemorrhage models in rats. Synchrotron radiation angiography, laser Doppler flowmetry-cerebral blood flow measurement, [125I]N-isopropyl-p-iodoamphetamine cerebral blood flow measurement and terminal examinations were applied to evaluate the changes of anterior circulation arteries in two subarachnoid hemorrhage models made by blood injection into cisterna magna and prechiasmatic cistern. Using synchrotron radiation angiography technique, we detected cerebral vasospasm in subarachnoid hemorrhage rats compared to the controls (p<0.05). We also identified two interesting findings: 1) both middle cerebral artery and anterior cerebral artery shrunk the most at day 3 after subarachnoid hemorrhage; 2) the diameter of anterior cerebral artery in the prechiasmatic cistern injection group was smaller than that in the cisterna magna injection group (p<0.05), but not for middle cerebral artery. We concluded that synchrotron radiation angiography provided a novel technique, which could directly evaluate cerebral vasospasm in small animal experimental subarachnoid hemorrhage models. The courses of vasospasm in these two injection models are similar; however, the model produced by prechiasmatic cistern injection is more suitable for study of anterior circulation vasospasm

Intuitionistic Fuzzy Time Series Functions Approach for Time Series Forecasting

Fuzzy inference systems have been commonly used for time series forecasting in the literature. Adaptive network fuzzy inference system, fuzzy time series approaches and fuzzy regression functions approaches are popular among fuzzy inference systems. In recent years, intuitionistic fuzzy sets have been preferred in the fuzzy modeling and new fuzzy inference systems have been proposed based on intuitionistic fuzzy sets. In this paper, a new intuitionistic fuzzy regression functions approach is proposed based on intuitionistic fuzzy sets for forecasting purpose. This new inference system is called an intuitionistic fuzzy time series functions approach. The contribution of the paper is proposing a new intuitionistic fuzzy inference system. To evaluate the performance of intuitionistic fuzzy time series functions, twenty-three real-world time series data sets are analyzed. The results obtained from the intuitionistic fuzzy time series functions approach are compared with some other methods according to a root mean square error and mean absolute percentage error criteria. The proposed method has superior forecasting performance among all methods

PROPER: global protein interaction network alignment through percolation matching

Background The alignment of protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks enables us to uncover the relationships between different species, which leads to a deeper understanding of biological systems. Network alignment can be used to transfer biological knowledge between species. Although different PI-network alignment algorithms were introduced during the last decade, developing an accurate and scalable algorithm that can find alignments with high biological and structural similarities among PPI networks is still challenging. Results In this paper, we introduce a new global network alignment algorithm for PPI networks called PROPER. Compared to other global network alignment methods, our algorithm shows higher accuracy and speed over real PPI datasets and synthetic networks. We show that the PROPER algorithm can detect large portions of conserved biological pathways between species. Also, using a simple parsimonious evolutionary model, we explain why PROPER performs well based on several different comparison criteria. Conclusions We highlight that PROPER has high potential in further applications such as detecting biological pathways, finding protein complexes and PPI prediction. The PROPER algorithm is available at http://proper.epfl.ch

Is the use of Tenofovir Dipivoxil fumarate effective and safe in preventing vertical transmission in pregnant women with chronic HBV with high viral load?

OBJECTIVE: In our country, transmission from mother to baby is the most common form of transmission of viral hepatitis B. A high viral load in the mother and HBeAg positivity pose the greatest risk of transmission from mother to baby. The best way to prevent this is to try to eliminate the viral load in the mother by using a strong antiviral such as prenatal TDF in mothers with a high viral load during pregnancy. This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of TDF in pregnant women with high viral load. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Seventy patients with hepatitis B e-antigen positive and negative were included in the retrospective study conducted in our clinic. In 35 cases, pregnant women with HBeAg (+) positive chronic HBV and HBV-DNA levels of 107 copies/mL were between 18 and 27 weeks of pregnancy. The pregnant women took 300 mg of TDF per day. There were 35 untreated HBeAg-negative, chronic HBV patients in the control group. Babies born to HBeAg-positive and HBeAg-negative mothers are given an initial dose of 200 IU of hepatitis B immune globulin (HBIG) and 20 g of recombinant hepatitis B vaccine in the first 12 hours after birth, followed by 4, 8, and 24 weeks. HBsAg and HBV-DNA findings were examined in newborn serum 28 weeks after birth. RESULTS: Postpartum 28 weeks, none of the babies born to HBeAg-positive mothers treated with TDF had HBsAg positivity, while 3.5% of babies born to HBeAg-negative mothers and not treated with TDF had HBsAg positivity and immunoprophylaxis failure. There was no statistically significant difference between the treatment and control groups regarding maternal height, weight, gestational age, or congenital malformations (p<0.05). There was no significant difference between the side effects seen in mothers. In the examination performed at the 28th week postpartum, a statistically significant decrease in HBV-DNA levels was observed in mothers who received TDF treatment compared to those who did not (88.5%) (p<0.05). In 31 of the 35 patients receiving TDF treatment, ALT was reported to be normalized in 25 of the 35 patients who did not receive TDF treatment (p<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: It has been observed that the use of TDF, which has a strong efficacy and high barrier, in the second and/or third trimester of pregnancy reduces transmission rates without causing side effects in both the mother and the newborn, thereby preventing vertical transmission of viral hepatitis B from the mother to child

KURAM VE UYGULAMADA EGITIM BILIMLERI

The aim of this study is to contribute to the enhancement of the quality of counseling skills training and counselor education through the medium of understanding the opinions of counselor candidates regarding counseling skills training. The research group consisted of 67 counselor candidates who voluntarily participated in the study. The research data was collected by three different qualitative data collection tools developed by the researchers. Content analysis was carried out and the results indicated five main themes: Counseling Skills, Specific Skills Training Methods, Perceptions of Counseling, Being a Counselor Candidate, the Learning and Teaching Process of Counseling Skills. The results also showed that within the scope of systematic counseling skills training programs, using various skill training methods and instructional technologies which are integrated compatibly was effective. At the same time, the results indicated that counseling skills training provided an increase in professional competency and helped to develop the professional identity of counselor candidates. The results are discussed and interpreted in light of the literature. Besides, some suggestions are provided to counselor educators and researchers