140 research outputs found
Identification of a second neutrophil-chemoattractant cytokine generated during an inflammatory reaction in the rabbit peritoneal cavity in vivo. Purification, partial amino acid sequence and structural relationship to melanoma-growth-stimulatory activity
Bramwell-Hill modeling for local aortic pulse wave velocity estimation: a validation study with velocity-encoded cardiovascular magnetic resonance and invasive pressure assessment
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The Bramwell-Hill model describes the relation between vascular wall stiffness expressed in aortic distensibility and the pulse wave velocity (PWV), which is the propagation speed of the systolic pressure wave through the aorta. The main objective of this study was to test the validity of this model locally in the aorta by using PWV-assessments based on in-plane velocity-encoded cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR), with invasive pressure measurements serving as the gold standard.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Seventeen patients (14 male, 3 female, mean age ± standard deviation = 57 ± 9 years) awaiting cardiac catheterization were prospectively included. During catheterization, intra-arterial pressure measurements were obtained in the aorta at multiple locations 5.8 cm apart. PWV was determined regionally over the aortic arch and locally in the proximal descending aorta. Subsequently, patients underwent a CMR examination to measure aortic PWV and aortic distention. Distensibility was determined locally from the aortic distension at the proximal descending aorta and the pulse pressure measured invasively during catheterization and non-invasively from brachial cuff-assessment. PWV was determined regionally in the aortic arch using through-plane and in-plane velocity-encoded CMR, and locally at the proximal descending aorta using in-plane velocity-encoded CMR. Validity of the Bramwell-Hill model was tested by evaluating associations between distensibility and PWV. Also, theoretical PWV was calculated from distensibility measurements and compared with pressure-assessed PWV.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In-plane velocity-encoded CMR provides stronger correlation (p = 0.02) between CMR and pressure-assessed PWV than through-plane velocity-encoded CMR (r = 0.69 versus r = 0.26), with a non-significant mean error of 0.2 ± 1.6 m/s for in-plane versus a significant (p = 0.006) error of 1.3 ± 1.7 m/s for through-plane velocity-encoded CMR. The Bramwell-Hill model shows a significantly (p = 0.01) stronger association between distensibility and PWV for local assessment (r = 0.8) than for regional assessment (r = 0.7), both for CMR and for pressure-assessed PWV. Theoretical PWV is strongly correlated (r = 0.8) with pressure-assessed PWV, with a statistically significant (p = 0.04) mean underestimation of 0.6 ± 1.1 m/s. This theoretical PWV-estimation is more accurate when invasively-assessed pulse pressure is used instead of brachial cuff-assessment (p = 0.03).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>CMR with in-plane velocity-encoding is the optimal approach for studying Bramwell-Hill associations between local PWV and aortic distensibility. This approach enables non-invasive estimation of local pulse pressure and distensibility.</p
Resuming elective orthopaedic surgery during the COVID-19 pandemic : guidelines developed by the International Consensus Group (ICM)
First measurement of as an inclusive test of the anomaly
We measure the tau-to-light-lepton ratio of inclusive -meson branching
fractions , where indicates an electron or muon, and thereby test
the universality of charged-current weak interactions. We select events that
have one fully reconstructed meson and a charged lepton candidate from
of electron-positron collision data collected with the
Belle II detector. We find , in agreement with standard-model expectations. This
is the first direct measurement of
Tests of light-lepton universality in angular asymmetries of decays
We present the first comprehensive tests of light-lepton universality in the
angular distributions of semileptonic \Bz-meson decays to charged spin-1
charmed mesons. We measure five angular-asymmetry observables as functions of
the decay recoil that are sensitive to lepton-universality-violating
contributions. We use events where one neutral \B is fully reconstructed in
\PUpsilonFourS{} \to\B\overline{B} decays in data corresponding to \lumion
integrated luminosity from electron-positron collisions collected with the
\belletwo detector. We find no significant deviation from the standard model
expectations
Measurement of asymmetries in decays with Belle II
We present a measurement of time-dependent rate asymmetries in decays to search for non-standard-model physics in transitions. The data sample is collected with the Belle II
detector at the SuperKEKB asymmetric-energy collider in 2019-2022
and contains bottom-antibottom mesons from
resonance decays. We reconstruct signal events and
extract the charge-parity () violating parameters from a fit to the
distribution of the proper-decay-time difference of the two mesons. The
measured direct and mixing-induced asymmetries are
and , respectively, where the first
uncertainties are statistical and the second are systematic. The results are
compatible with the asymmetries observed in
transitions
Measurement of the branching fraction for the decay at Belle II
We report a measurement of the branching fraction of decays, where or
, using electron-positron collisions recorded at an energy at or near
the mass and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of
fb. The data was collected during 2019--2021 by the Belle II experiment
at the SuperKEKB asymmetric-energy collider. We reconstruct
candidates in the , , and
final states. The signal yields with statistical uncertainties are ,
, and for the decays , , and , respectively.
We measure the branching fractions of these decays for the entire range of the
dilepton mass, excluding the very low mass region to suppress the background and regions compatible with decays
of charmonium resonances, to be \begin{equation} {\cal B}(B \to
K^{\ast}(892)\mu^+\mu^-) = (1.19 \pm 0.31 ^{+0.08}_{-0.07}) \times 10^{-6},
{\cal B}(B \to K^{\ast}(892)e^+e^-) = (1.42 \pm 0.48 \pm 0.09)\times 10^{-6},
{\cal B}(B \to K^{\ast}(892)\ell^+\ell^-) = (1.25 \pm 0.30 ^{+0.08}_{-0.07})
\times 10^{-6}, \end{equation} where the first and second uncertainties are
statistical and systematic, respectively. These results, limited by sample
size, are the first measurements of branching
fractions from the Belle II experiment
Precise measurement of the lifetime at Belle II
We measure the lifetime of the meson using a data sample of 207
fb collected by the Belle II experiment running at the SuperKEKB
asymmetric-energy collider. The lifetime is determined by fitting the
decay-time distribution of a sample of
decays. Our result is \tau^{}_{D^+_s} = (498.7\pm
1.7\,^{+1.1}_{-0.8}) fs, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the
second is systematic. This result is significantly more precise than previous
measurements.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, to be submitted to Physical Review Letter
Influence of socioeconomic factors on pregnancy outcome in women with structural heart disease
OBJECTIVE: Cardiac disease is the leading cause of indirect maternal mortality. The aim of this study was to analyse to what extent socioeconomic factors influence the outcome of pregnancy in women with heart disease. METHODS: The Registry of Pregnancy and Cardiac disease is a global prospective registry. For this analysis, countries that enrolled ≥10 patients were included. A combined cardiac endpoint included maternal cardiac death, arrhythmia requiring treatment, heart failure, thromboembolic event, aortic dissection, endocarditis, acute coronary syndrome, hospitalisation for cardiac reason or intervention. Associations between patient characteristics, country characteristics (income inequality expressed as Gini coefficient, health expenditure, schooling, gross domestic product, birth rate and hospital beds) and cardiac endpoints were checked in a three-level model (patient-centre-country). RESULTS: A total of 30 countries enrolled 2924 patients from 89 centres. At least one endpoint occurred in 645 women (22.1%). Maternal age, New York Heart Association classification and modified WHO risk classification were associated with the combined endpoint and explained 37% of variance in outcome. Gini coefficient and country-specific birth rate explained an additional 4%. There were large differences between the individual countries, but the need for multilevel modelling to account for these differences disappeared after adjustment for patient characteristics, Gini and country-specific birth rate. CONCLUSION: While there are definite interregional differences in pregnancy outcome in women with cardiac disease, these differences seem to be mainly driven by individual patient characteristics. Adjustment for country characteristics refined the results to a limited extent, but maternal condition seems to be the main determinant of outcome
Measurement of branching fractions and direct asymmetries for and decays at Belle II
We report measurements of the branching fractions and direct
asymmetries of the decays , , , and , and use these for testing the standard
model through an isospin-based sum rule. In addition, we measure the branching
fraction and direct asymmetry of the decay and
the branching fraction of the decay . The data are
collected with the Belle II detector from collisions at the
resonance produced by the SuperKEKB asymmetric-energy collider
and contain bottom-antibottom meson pairs. Signal yields are
determined in two-dimensional fits to background-discriminating variables, and
range from 500 to 3900 decays, depending on the channel. We obtain for the sum rule, in agreement with the standard model
expectation of zero and with a precision comparable to the best existing
determinations
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