Liver function abnormalities, clinical profile, and outcome in acute decompensated heart failure

AIMS: The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of abnormal liver function tests (LFTs) and the associated clinical profile and outcome(s) in acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF) patients. Alteration in LFTs is a recognized feature of ADHF, but prevalence and outcomes data from a broad contemporary cohort of ADHF are scarce and the mechanism(s) of ADHF-induced cholestasis is unknown. METHODS AND RESULTS: We conducted a post hoc analysis of SURVIVE, a large clinical trial including ADHF patients treated with levosimendan or dobutamine. All LFTs were available in 1134 patients at baseline. Abnormal LFTs were seen in 46% of ADHF patients: isolated abnormal alkaline phosphatase (AP) was noted in 11%, isolated abnormal transaminases in 26%, and a combination of abnormal AP and transaminases in 9%. Abnormal AP was associated with marked signs of systemic congestion and elevated right-sided filling pressure. Abnormal AP had no relationship with 31-day mortality but was associated with worse 180-day mortality (23.5 vs. 34.9%, P = 0.001 vs. patients with normal AP). Abnormal transaminases were associated with clinical signs of hypoperfusion and with greater 31-day and 180-day mortality compared with normal transaminase profiles (17.6 vs. 8.4% and 31.6 vs. 22.4%, respectively; both P < 0.001). There was no additive value of abnormal AP plus abnormal transaminase on a long-term outcome. CONCLUSION: Abnormal LFTs were present in about a half of patients presenting with ADHF treated with inotropes. Abnormal AP and abnormal transaminases were associated with specific clinical, biological, and prognostic features, including a short-term overmortality with increased transaminases but not with biological signs of cholestasis, in ADHF patient

Studies on the relationship between microsomal epoxide hydrolase and the vitamin K epoxide reductase complex.

Studies on the relationship between microsomal epoxide hydrolase and the vitamin K epoxide reductase complex

Estimating the Effects of Weather Variations on Corn Yields using Geographically Weighted Panel Regression

Through a geographically weighted panel regression analysis, we demonstrate the spatially varying relationship between weather and corn yields. A balanced panel data of 958 U.S. corn production counties for the period 2002-2006 is used. The results indicate that the relationship between weather and corn yield has large spatial variability. In specific, temperature tends to have negative marginal effects on corn yield in warmer regions, and positive effects in cooler regions. The spatial pattern of precipitation effects is more complicated since it is expected to be largely affected by local irrigation systems

Estimating the Spatially Varying Responses of Corn Yields to Weather Variations using Geographically Weighted Panel Regression

Researchers have extensively studied crop yield response to weather variations, while only a limited number of studies have attempted to identify spatial heterogeneity in this relationship. We explore spatial heterogeneity in corn yield response to weather by combining geographically weighted regression and panel regression. We find that temperature tends to have negative effects on U.S. corn yields in warmer regions and positive effects in cooler regions, with spatial heterogeneity at a fine scale. The spatial pattern of precipitation effects is more complicated. A further analysis shows that precipitation effects are sensitive to the existence of irrigation systems

Estimating the Spatially Varying Responses of Corn Yields toWeather Variations using GeographicallyWeighted Panel Regression

Researchers have extensively studied crop yield response to weather variations, while only a limited number of studies have attempted to identify spatial heterogeneity in this relationship. We explore spatial heterogeneity in corn yield response to weather by combining geographically weighted regression and panel regression. We find that temperature tends to have negative effects on U.S. corn yields in warmer regions and positive effects in cooler regions, with spatial heterogeneity at a fine scale. The spatial pattern of precipitation effects is more complicated. A further analysis shows that precipitation effects are sensitive to the existence of irrigation systems

Design of Intelligent Manufacturing Big Data Cloud Service Platform

With the coming of the intelligent manufacturing, the technology and application of industrial big data will be popular in the future. The productivity, competitiveness and innovation of the manufacturing industries will be improved through the integrated innovation of big data technology and industries. Besides, products, production process, management, services, new form and new models will be more intellectualized. They will support the transformation and upgrading of manufacturing industry and the construction of an open, shared and collaborative ecological environment for intelligent manufacturing industry

Design of Intelligent Manufacturing Big Data Cloud Service Platform

With the coming of the intelligent manufacturing, the technology and application of industrial big data will be popular in the future. The productivity, competitiveness and innovation of the manufacturing industries will be improved through the integrated innovation of big data technology and industries. Besides, products, production process, management, services, new form and new models will be more intellectualized. They will support the transformation and upgrading of manufacturing industry and the construction of an open, shared and collaborative ecological environment for intelligent manufacturing industry

GPSR: Gradient-Prior-Based Network for Image Super-Resolution

Recent deep learning has shown great potential in super-resolution (SR) tasks. However, most deep learning-based SR networks are optimized via pixel-level loss (i.e., L1, L2, and MSE), which forces the networks to output the average of all possible predictions, leading to blurred details. Especially in SR tasks with large scaling factors (i.e., ×4, ×8), the limitation is further aggravated. To alleviate this limitation, we propose a Gradient-Prior-based Super-Resolution network (GPSR). Specifically, a detail-preserving Gradient Guidance Strategy is proposed to fully exploit the gradient prior to guide the SR process from two aspects. On the one hand, an additional gradient branch is introduced into GPSR to provide the critical structural information. On the other hand, a compact gradient-guided loss is proposed to strengthen the constraints on the spatial structure and to prevent the blind restoration of high-frequency details. Moreover, two residual spatial attention adaptive aggregation modules are proposed and incorporated into the SR branch and the gradient branch, respectively, to fully exploit the crucial intermediate features to enhance the feature representation ability. Comprehensive experimental results demonstrate that the proposed GPSR outperforms state-of-the-art methods regarding both subjective visual quality and objective quantitative metrics in SR tasks with large scaling factors (i.e., ×4 and ×8)

The Effects of 2′-O-Methoxyethyl Oligonucleotides on Renal Function in Humans

Systemically administered 2'-O-methoxyethyl (2'MOE) antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) accumulate in the kidney and metabolites are cleared in urine. The effects of eleven 2'MOE ASOs on renal function were assessed in 2,435 patients from 32 phase 2 and phase 3 trials. The principle analysis was on data from 28 randomized placebo-controlled trials. Mean levels of renal parameters remained within normal ranges over time across dose groups. Patient-level meta-analyses demonstrated a significant difference between placebo-treated and 2'MOE ASO-treated patients at doses &gt;175 mg/week in the percentage and absolute change from baseline for serum creatinine and estimated glomerular filtration rate. However, these changes were not clinically significant or progressive. No dose-related effects were observed in the incidence of abnormal renal test results in the total population of patients, or subpopulation of diabetic patients or patients with renal dysfunction at baseline. The incidence of acute kidney injury [serum creatinine ≥0.3 mg/dL (26.5 μM) increases from baseline or ≥1.5 × baseline] in 2'MOE ASO-treated patients (2.4%) was not statistically different from placebo (1.7%, P = 0.411). In conclusion, in this database, encompassing 32 clinical trials and 11 different 2'MOE ASOs, we found no evidence of clinically significant renal dysfunction up to 52 weeks of randomized-controlled treatment

Liver function abnormalities, clinical profile, and outcome in acute decompensated heart failure

The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of abnormal liver function tests (LFTs) and the associated clinical profile and outcome(s) in acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF) patients. Alteration in LFTs is a recognized feature of ADHF, but prevalence and outcomes data from a broad contemporary cohort of ADHF are scarce and the mechanism(s) of ADHF-induced cholestasis is unknown. We conducted a post hoc analysis of SURVIVE, a large clinical trial including ADHF patients treated with levosimendan or dobutamine. All LFTs were available in 1134 patients at baseline. Abnormal LFTs were seen in 46 of ADHF patients: isolated abnormal alkaline phosphatase (AP) was noted in 11, isolated abnormal transaminases in 26, and a combination of abnormal AP and transaminases in 9. Abnormal AP was associated with marked signs of systemic congestion and elevated right-sided filling pressure. Abnormal AP had no relationship with 31-day mortality but was associated with worse 180-day mortality (23.5 vs. 34.9, P 0.001 vs. patients with normal AP). Abnormal transaminases were associated with clinical signs of hypoperfusion and with greater 31-day and 180-day mortality compared with normal transaminase profiles (17.6 vs. 8.4 and 31.6 vs. 22.4, respectively; both P 0.001). There was no additive value of abnormal AP plus abnormal transaminase on a long-term outcome. Abnormal LFTs were present in about a half of patients presenting with ADHF treated with inotropes. Abnormal AP and abnormal transaminases were associated with specific clinical, biological, and prognostic features, including a short-term overmortality with increased transaminases but not with biological signs of cholestasis, in ADHF patients