An analysis on reasons of non-compliant to cardiac rehabilitation programme

Abstract no. 09published_or_final_versio

Serum lipid and apolipoprotein distributions in Hong Kong Chinese

STUDY OBJECTIVE--The aim was to describe the distribution of lipids and apolipoproteins in the Chinese population in Hong Kong. DESIGN--This was a prospective, cross sectional, population based survey. SETTINGS--The study was conducted in a single, self referred, out patient screening centre. PARTICIPANTS--Altogether 825 Chinese adults aged > or = 20 years were screened. One hundred subjects who had previously had lipid measurement and 29 who were taking lipid modifying drugs were excluded but 289 men and 407 women remained for further analysis. MAIN RESULTS--Age standardised mean (SEM) lipids concentrations for Hong Kong Chinese were total cholesterol: men, 5.48 (0.05) mmol/l and women, 5.46 (0.06) mmol/l; triglycerides: men, 1.22 (1.03) mmol/l and women, 1.00 (1.03) mmol/l; high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol: men, 1.25 (0.02) mmol/l and women, 1.42 (0.02) mmol/l; low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol: men, 3.56 (0.05) mmol/l and women, 3.50 (0.06) mmol/l; apolipoprotein A-I (apo A-I): men, 1.34 (0.01) g/l and women, 1.46 (0.01) g/l; and apolipoprotein B (apo B): men, 1.15 (0.02) g/l and women, 1.06 (0.02) g/l. The total to HDL cholesterol ratios were men, 4.62 (0.07) and women, 4.10 (0.08); and apo B to apo A-I ratios (apo B/A) were men, 0.88 (0.02) and women, 0.75 (0.02). While levels of total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, apo B, triglycerides, total/HDL cholesterol, and apo B/A were positively associated with age in both sexes and were higher in men before the age 50-59 years, they rose steeply thereafter in women to cross over the levels in men. In contrast, HDL cholesterol decreased with age while apo A-I remained constant, and both were consistently higher in women than in men in all age groups. CONCLUSIONS--Hong Kong Chinese have attained lipid profiles similar to those in other developed western populations. Environmental factors seem influential in this regard. Faced with the increasing coronary mortality of recent years, there should be a major effort to reduce the cholesterol concentrations in this population.published_or_final_versio

Cardiac rehabilitation improves functional and clinical status of patients after AMI or PTCA - a randomised controlled study

published_or_final_versio

Influence of clinical parameters on short-term outcome in cardiac rehabilitation patients after actue myocardial infarction

published_or_final_versio

Active cardiac rehabilitation program is able to improve risk factors profile

Abstract no. 08published_or_final_versio

Prediction of Thromboembolic Events in Heart Failure Patients in Sinus Rhythm: The Hong Kong Heart Failure Registry

published_or_final_versio

Nanofiber fabrication in a temperature and humidity controlled environment for improved fibre consistency

To fabricate nanofibers with reproducible characteristics, an important demand for many applications, the effect of controlled atmospheric conditions on resulting electrospun cellulose acetate (CA) nanofibers was evaluated for temperature ranging 17.5 - 35°C and relative humidity ranging 20% - 70%. With the potential application of nanofibers in many industries, especially membrane and filter fabrication, their reproducible production must be established to ensure commercially viability.
Cellulose acetate (CA) solution (0.2 g/ml) in a solvent mixture of acetone/DMF/ethanol (2:2:1) was electrospun into nonwoven fibre mesh with the fibre diameter ranging from 150nm to 1µm.
The resulting nanofibers were observed and analyzed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), showing a correlation of reducing average fibre diameter with increasing atmospheric temperature. A less pronounced correlation was seen with changes in relative humidity regarding fibre diameter, though it was shown that increased humidity reduced the effect of fibre beading yielding a more consistent, and therefore better quality of fibre fabrication.
Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) studies observed lower melt enthalpies for finer CA nanofibers in the first heating cycle confirming the results gained from SEM analysis. From the conditions that were explored in this study the temperature and humidity that gave the most suitable fibre mats for a membrane purpose were 25.0°C and 50%RH due to the highest level of fibre diameter uniformity, the lowest level of beading while maintaining a low fibre diameter for increased surface area and increased pore size homogeneity. This study has highlighted the requirement to control the atmospheric conditions during the electrospinning process in order to fabricate reproducible fibre mats

Theoretical Aspects of Particle Production

These lectures describe some of the latest data on particle production in high-energy collisions and compare them with theoretical calculations and models based on QCD. The main topics covered are: fragmentation functions and factorization, small-x fragmentation, hadronization models, differences between quark and gluon fragmentation, current and target fragmentation in deep inelastic scattering, and heavy quark fragmentation.Comment: 26 pages, 27 figures. Lectures at International Summer School on Particle Production Spanning MeV and TeV Energies, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, August 199

Protective effect of stromal Dickkopf-3 in prostate cancer: opposing roles for TGFBI and ECM-1

Aberrant transforming growth factor–β (TGF-β) signaling is a hallmark of the stromal microenvironment in cancer. Dickkopf-3 (Dkk-3), shown to inhibit TGF-β signaling, is downregulated in prostate cancer and upregulated in the stroma in benign prostatic hyperplasia, but the function of stromal Dkk-3 is unclear. Here we show that DKK3 silencing in WPMY-1 prostate stromal cells increases TGF-β signaling activity and that stromal cellconditioned media inhibit prostate cancer cell invasion in a Dkk-3-dependent manner. DKK3 silencing increased the level of the cell-adhesion regulator TGF-β–induced protein (TGFBI) in stromal and epithelial cell-conditioned media, and recombinant TGFBI increased prostate cancer cell invasion. Reduced expression of Dkk-3 in patient tumors was associated with increased expression of TGFBI. DKK3 silencing reduced the level of extracellular matrix protein-1 (ECM-1) in prostate stromal cell-conditioned media but increased it in epithelial cell-conditioned media, and recombinant ECM-1 inhibited TGFBI-induced prostate cancer cell invasion. Increased ECM1 and DKK3 mRNA expression in prostate tumors was associated with increased relapse-free survival. These observations are consistent with a model in which the loss of Dkk-3 in prostate cancer leads to increased secretion of TGFBI and ECM-1, which have tumor-promoting and tumor-protective roles, respectively. Determining how the balance between the opposing roles of extracellular factors influences prostate carcinogenesis will be key to developing therapies that target the tumor microenvironment