Determinants of left ventricular hypertrophy among elderly hypertensive in Malaysia

Left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) has high prognostic value on cardiovascular mortality and morbidity. However, echocardiography is not routinely performed among elderly hypertensives in the primary-care setting due to limited resources. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of LVH and its associated risk factors in a multi- ethnic elderly hypertensive population in a primary-care clinic in Malaysia. This study was a sub-analysis of a cross-sectional study of 359 patients with hypertension in a primary-care clinic. All test subjects recruited for the study were hypertensive patients aged 60 and above. Blood pressure, height and weight were measured. All patients underwent an echocardiogram examination for diagnosis of LVH. One hundred and ninety-nine patients were studied for the analysis. The mean age and duration of hypertension was 64.8 (SD 2.9) and 10.4 (SD 7.7) years, respectively. The study found that 44.7% of respondents achieved target blood pressure. The prevalence of LVH was 23.6%. Using multiple logistic regression, factors associated with LVH among elderly patients with hypertension were diabetes (odds ratio [OR] 3.346, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.458-7.676), higher diastolic blood pressure (OR: 1.088; 95% CI: 1.024-1.156), higher body mass index (OR: 1.113; 95% CI: 1.031-1.203) and poorer blood pressure control was 23.6%. Using multiple logistic regression, factors associated with LVH among elderly patients with hypertension were diabetes (odds ratio [OR] 3.346, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.458-7.676), higher diastolic blood pressure (OR: 1.088; 95% CI: 1.024-1.156), higher body mass index (OR: 1.113; 95% CI: 1.031-1.203) and poorer blood pressure control (OR: 2.924; 95% CI: 1.180-7.258). Poor hypertension control, higher diastolic blood pressure, presence of diabetes and obesity are the predictors for the development of LVH in elderly hypertensive

[N-Benzyl-N-(diphenyl­phosphanylmeth­yl)pyridin-2-amine]­chloridomethyl­platinum(II)

In the mononuclear title complex, [Pt(CH3)Cl(C25H23N2P)], the N-benzyl-N-(diphenyl­phosphanylmeth­yl)pyridin-2-amine functions as a bidentate ligand with the pyridyl N atom and the phosphine P atom chelating the PtII ion, forming a six-membered metallocycle. The PtII atom adopts a square-planar coordination geometry with one methyl group and one chloride ligand bonding to the metal center in a cis relationship. C—H⋯π and C—H⋯Cl inter­actions help to consolidate the packing

Mixture theory-based SPH model for submerged landslide

A novel SPH model aimed at solving the coupled water-soil problems is proposed based on the mixture theory. This method is featured with the spatially overlapped dual continua for both fluid and solid phases. The water phase is modeled as a weakly-compressible Newtonian fluid, and the soil phase is modeled using an elastoplastic constitutive model. The benchmark problem, fully submerged soil subjected to gravity, is examined to validate this SPH model. Finally, a submerged landslide is simulated to demonstrate the capability of the proposed SPH model in solving the dynamic soil–water coupling problems

Marine propulsion shaft system fault diagnosis method based on partly ensemble empirical mode decomposition and SVM

This paper investigates the application of the Partly Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (PEEMD), Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) on signal processing, attribute reduction and pattern recognition. On this basis, a novel method for mechanical faulty diagnosis based on PEEMD, PCA and SVM is presented, which utilizes the PEEMD to extract faulty feature parameters from the statistical characteristics of intrinsic mode functions to constitute feature vectors, and then makes the attribute reduction by PCA method to obtain the key features, lastly these key features are input into GA-optimized SVM to accomplish faulty pattern recognition. The experimental results of the proposed method to fault diagnosis of the rolling bearing and stern bearing on marine propulsion shaft system show that this method can extract the faulty features, which have better classification ability and at the same time reduce the computation complexity significantly, accordingly improve the classifier efficiency and achieve a better classification performance

Therapeutic Effects of Water Extract of Arisaema Erubescens Tubers on Type II Collagen-induced Arthritis in Rats

Purpose: To investigate the anti-arthritic activity of the water extract of Rhizoma Arisaematis (WERA) using collagen II (CII)-induced arthritis (CIA) rat model.Methods: CIA was induced in male Sprague-Dawley rat by intra dermal injection of bovine collagen type II (C II) in Freund’s complete adjuvant (cFA). The rats were treated daily for 21 consecutive days with WERA at doses of 100, 200, and 400 mg/kg. Methotrexate (MTX) was used as positive control, and administered at a dose of 3 mg/kg intraperitoneally in two-weekly cycles for 3 weeks. Severity of arthritis was evaluated by arthritic scores, including paw swelling, arthritic score, body weight, thymus index and spleen index. The levels of IL-1β, IL-6, IL-10 and TNF-α in serum were also measured.Results: The results revealed that WERA significantly inhibited paw edema (p-value < 0.01), decreased arthritis scores (p-value < 0.01) and spleen index (p-value < 0.05), and alleviated the weight loss of CIA rats. Furthermore, the pro-inflammatory cytokines of TNF-α (19.3%, 60.5% and 73.9%, respectively), IL- 1β (7.9%, 41.1% and 52.7%, respectively) and IL-6 (26.6%, 48.0% and 72.2%, respectively) were remarkably attenuated in serum of all WERA treated rats, however, IL-10 (72.4% and 39.1%, respectively) was markedly increased at doses of 200 and 400 mg/kg of WERA.Conclusion: The results demonstrate that WERA exerts therapeutic effects in collagen--induced arthritis of rats by decreasing the levels of TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6 and IL-10 in serum, and therefore may be an effective candidate drug for the treatment of human rheumatoid arthritis.Keywords: Rhizoma Arisaematis, Rheumatoid arthritis, Inflammatory, Cytokines, Freund’s complete adjuvan

Effect of Arisaema erubescens (Wall) Schott rhizome extract on rheumatoid arthritis

Purpose: To investigate the anti-arthritic activity of the water extract of Rhizoma Arisaematis (WERA) using a collagen II -induced arthritis (CIA) rat model.Methods: CIA was induced in male Sprague-Dawley rats by intradermal injection of bovine collagen II in Complete Freund’s Adjuvant. The rats were treated with daily oral doses of WERA (100, 200, and 400 mg/kg) for 21 consecutive days. Methotrexate (MTX, 3 mg/kg), used as a positive control, was administered orally 2 times/week for 3 weeks. The severity of arthritis was evaluated using indices of paw swelling, arthritic score, body weight, thymus index, and spleen index. In addition, the serum levels of IL-1β, IL-6, IL-10, and TNF-α were measured.Results: All doses of WERA significantly inhibited paw edema (p < 0.01), decreased arthritis scores (p < 0.01) and spleen index (p < 0.05), and alleviated the weight loss associated with CIA in rats. Furthermore, TNF-α, IL-1β, and IL-6 serum levels were significantly decreased (p < 0.05) by all doses of WERA. By contrast, IL-10 serum levels were markedly increased (p < 0.05).Conclusion: WERA exerts therapeutic effects in CIA in rats by decreasing the serum levels of TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6 and IL-10, suggesting WERA may be an effective candidate drug for treating human rheumatoid arthritis.Keywords: Rhizoma Arisaematis, Rheumatoid arthritis, Inflammatory, Cytokines, Freund’s complete adjuvan