Adiponectin, diabetes and ischemic heart failure: a challenging relationship

Abstract Background Several peptides, named adipokines, are produced by the adipose tissue. Among those, adiponectin (AD) is the most abundant. AD promotes peripheral insulin sensitivity, inhibits liver gluconeogenesis and displays anti-atherogenic and anti-inflammatory properties. Lower levels of AD are related to a higher risk of myocardial infarction and a worse prognosis in patients with coronary artery disease. However, despite a favorable clinical profile, AD increases in relation to worsening heart failure (HF); in this context, higher adiponectinemia is reliably related to poor prognosis. There is still little knowledge about how certain metabolic conditions, such as diabetes mellitus, modulate the relationship between AD and HF. We evaluated the level of adiponectin in patients with ischemic HF, with and without type 2 diabetes, to elucidate whether the metabolic syndrome was able to influence the relationship between AD and HF. Results We demonstrated that AD rises in patients with advanced HF, but to a lesser extent in diabetics than in non-diabetics. Diabetic patients with reduced systolic performance orchestrated a slower rise of AD which began only in face of overt HF. The different behavior of AD in the presence of diabetes was not entirely explained by differences in body mass index. In addition, NT-proBNP, the second strongest predictor of AD, did not differ significantly between diabetic and non-diabetic patients. These data indicate that some other mechanisms are involved in the regulation of AD in patients with type 2 diabetes and coronary artery disease. Conclusions AD rises across chronic heart failure stages but this phenomenon is less evident in type 2 diabetic patients. In the presence of diabetes, the progressive increase of AD in relation to the severity of LV dysfunction is hampered and becomes evident only in overt HF.</p

Songs of a Future Past - An Experimental Study of Online Persuaders

In this paper, we present the results of an extensive experimental study on users decisions inside an online setting. In the experiment, participants purchase songs using real money while having enough time to explore them at leisure before buying. In such a set up, surpisingly, common social influence signals such as star ratings, download counts and recommendations had no influence. However, as soon as the exploration was made slightly more cumbersome market inequality appeared. This is an indication that it is decision-making shortcuts, rather then social influence, to trigger distorting market effects

Effects of Structured Versus Unstructured Self-Monitoring of Blood Glucose on Glucose Control in Patients With Non-insulin-treated Type 2 Diabetes: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials

Background: The use of self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) in patients with non-insulin-treated type 2 diabetes is debated. Meta-analyses of randomized clinical trials (RCTs) suggest a small reduction of HbA1c in patients using SMBG, without considering potential confounders, such as SMBG regimen and use of SMBG data to adjust diabetes medications. Methods: A meta-analysis was performed including RCTs in patients with non-insulin-treated type 2 diabetes, with an intervention of ≥24 weeks and HbA1c as the primary endpoint, to verify the effect of SMBG (vs no monitoring), structured SMBG (vs unstructured), and of SMBG-driven therapy adjustments. Results: In RCTs (n = 8) comparing SMBG with no SMBG (1277 and 1072 patients, respectively), SMBG reduced HbA1c by −0.17% (95% CI −0.25 to −0.09%, P <.003). The reduction in HbA1c was greater in RCTs (n = 3) in which SMBG data were used to adjust diabetes medications (HbA1c decrease: −0.3% [95% CI −0.49 to −0.1%]) than in RCTs (n = 6) where SMBG data were not used for this purpose (HbA1c decrease: −0.1% [95% CI −0.2 to 0.0%]) (P <.005). In the RCTs comparing structured and unstructured SMBG (757 and 750 patients, respectively), in which structured SMBG data were also used to adjust diabetes medications, the HbA1c difference between groups at study end was −0.27% (95% CI −0.49 to −0.04%, P <.018). Conclusions: In RCTs performed in non-insulin-treated patients with type 2 diabetes, SMBG is associated with a significant, although small, reduction in HbA1c. HbA1c reduction was greater with structured SMBG and when structured SMBG data were used to adjust diabetes therapy

The Computational Psychology of Digital Shop Assistants

This proposal describes a project lying at the intersection of Computer Science and Social Sciences whose goal is to state and investigate some basic questions concerning recommender systems (henceforth RS’s). The advent of the internet has changed cultural markets in profound ways. The global volume of online purchases of music, books, movies, video games and other forms of cultural products has reached the 1.5 trillion dollars mark in 2014, and the trend is increasing. Today, an estimated 1.22 billions people acquire cultural products through the internet. RS’s are a key component of these online markets. In the old days, a regular customer of, say, a music shop, could get the advice of a knowledgeable shop assistant with whom s/he had developed a relationship of trust. Based on the knowledge of the customer’s taste and of the music world, the assistant could offer insightful suggestions to the customer, providing useful advice. Roughly speaking, a RS is a digital, algorithmic analogue of the shop assistant that, on the basis of the past online behaviour of the current customer and of the entire collective behaviour of online visitors, helps navigate the huge catalogue of online choices by providing suggestions in a purely algorithmic fashion. Thus, a visitor to the YouTube home site will be presented with a list of videos that, hopefully, will match his/her interests, and a person looking for a book on Amazon will likewise see a list of other interesting books to buy. In spite of the fact that RS’s are fundamental actors of online cultural markets, their power to shape and influence is still largely unknown. The goal of this proposal is to investigate the extent to which a cultural market can be affected by RS’s and the interplay between computational and psychological mechanisms underlying them

Are there any relations among transplant centre volume, surgical technique and anatomy for donor graft selection? Ten-year multicentric Italian experience on mini-invasive living donor nephrectomy

Selection of the right or left living donor kidney for transplantation is influenced by many variables. In the present multi centric study including 21 Italian transplant centres, we evaluated whether centre volume or surgical technique may influence the selection process