3,776 research outputs found
Cardiac Autonomic Nervous System in Heart Failure: Imaging Technique and Clinical Implications
The autonomic nervous system interacts in the pathophysiology of heart failure. Dysfunction of the sympathetic nervous system has been identified as an important prognostic marker in patients with chronic heart failure. At present, cardiac sympathetic nerve imaging with 123-iodine metaiodobenzylguanidine [123-I MIBG] has been employed most frequently for the assessment of cardiac sympathetic innervation and activation pattern. The majority of studies have shown that cardiac sympathetic dysfunction as assessed with 123-I MIBG imaging is a powerful predictor for heart failure mortality and morbidity. Additionally, 123-I MIBG imaging can be used for prediction of potentially lethal ventricular tachyarrhythmias in heart failure patients. At present however, the lack of standardization of 123-I MIBG imaging procedures represents an evident issue. Standardized criteria on the use of 123-I MIBG imaging will further strengthen the clinical use of 123-I MIBG imaging in heart failure patients
Characterisation of the differential expression of marker antigens by normal and malignant endometrial epithelium
In order to examine the production of marker proteins, a reproducible method has been established for culturing purified epithelial cells from normal and malignant endometrium. We have examined the differential expression of secretory proteins using immunohistochemistry in frozen tissue sections, immunocytochemistry in cell cultures derived from the same specimens and protein assays on the culture supernatants. Placental protein 14 (PP14) was produced by normal premenopausal epithelium but not by the post-menopausal or malignant endometrial epithelium. In contrast, placental alkaline phosphatase (PLAP) was produced by endometrial cancers and the endometrial adenocarcinoma-derived cell line Ishikawa, but not by the normal endometrial epithelium. Other markers such as CA-125, which was produced by both normal and malignant endometrium but not by the cell line, and human chorionic gonadotrophin (beta-hCG), which was produced by Ishikawa cells but not by any of the fresh tissues, were less cancer specific. Placental alkaline phosphatase is a direct product of endometrial cancers that can be readily assayed in serum using this two-site assay to test its clinical usefulness in monitoring patients at risk for endometrial cancer
Families with infants: a general approach to solve hard partition problems
We introduce a general approach for solving partition problems where the goal
is to represent a given set as a union (either disjoint or not) of subsets
satisfying certain properties. Many NP-hard problems can be naturally stated as
such partition problems. We show that if one can find a large enough system of
so-called families with infants for a given problem, then this problem can be
solved faster than by a straightforward algorithm. We use this approach to
improve known bounds for several NP-hard problems as well as to simplify the
proofs of several known results.
For the chromatic number problem we present an algorithm with
time and exponential space for graphs of average
degree . This improves the algorithm by Bj\"{o}rklund et al. [Theory Comput.
Syst. 2010] that works for graphs of bounded maximum (as opposed to average)
degree and closes an open problem stated by Cygan and Pilipczuk [ICALP 2013].
For the traveling salesman problem we give an algorithm working in
time and polynomial space for graphs of average
degree . The previously known results of this kind is a polyspace algorithm
by Bj\"{o}rklund et al. [ICALP 2008] for graphs of bounded maximum degree and
an exponential space algorithm for bounded average degree by Cygan and
Pilipczuk [ICALP 2013].
For counting perfect matching in graphs of average degree~ we present an
algorithm with running time and polynomial
space. Recent algorithms of this kind due to Cygan, Pilipczuk [ICALP 2013] and
Izumi, Wadayama [FOCS 2012] (for bipartite graphs only) use exponential space.Comment: 18 pages, a revised version of this paper is available at
http://arxiv.org/abs/1410.220
Micro-costing study of rituximab subcutaneous injection versus intravenous infusion in dutch setting
Long-term prognostic value of dobutamine-atropine stress echocardiography in 1737 patients with known or suspected coronary artery disease
Prediction of improvement of left ventricular function and heart failure symptoms by FDG SPECT
IVUS detects more coronary calcifications than MSCT; matter of both resolution and cross-sectional assessment?
Vascular Biology and Interventio
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