Rosuvastatin Slows Progression of Carotid Intima-Media Thickness: The METEOR-China Randomized Controlled Study

Background: Atherosclerosis is the leading cause of cardiovascular disease worldwide, including in China. Primary prevention, through lipid-lowering, could avert development of atherosclerosis. Carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT) is a well-validated measure of atherosclerosis used in intervention studies as the primary outcome and alternative end point for cardiovascular disease events. Methods: This randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter, parallel-group study assessed the effects of rosuvastatin 20 mg/d compared with placebo on progression of CIMT over 104 weeks in Chinese people with subclinical atherosclerosis. The primary end point was the annualized rate of change in mean of the maximum CIMT measurements taken 7× over the study period from each of 12 carotid artery sites (near and far walls of the right and left common carotid artery, carotid bulb, and internal carotid artery). Secondary end points included CIMT changes at different artery sites and lipid-parameter changes. Safety was also assessed. Results: Participants were randomized (1:1) to receive rosuvastatin (n=272) or placebo (n=271). Baseline characteristics were well balanced between groups. The change in mean of the maximum CIMT of the 12 carotid sites was 0.0038 mm/y (95% CI, -0.0023-0.0100) for the rosuvastatin group versus 0.0142 mm/y (95% CI, 0.0080-0.0204) for the placebo group, with a difference of -0.0103 mm/y (95% CI, -0.0191 to -0.0016; P=0.020). For the CIMT secondary end points, the results were generally consistent with the primary end point. There were clinically relevant improvements in lipid parameters with rosuvastatin. We observed an adverse-event profile consistent with the known safety profile of rosuvastatin. Conclusions: Rosuvastatin 20 mg/d significantly reduced the progression of CIMT over 2 years in Chinese adults with subclinical atherosclerosis and was well tolerated. Registration: URL: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov; Unique identifier: NCT02546323

Measuring effects on intima-media thickness: an evaluation of rosuvastatin in Chinese subjects with subclinical atherosclerosis—design, rationale, and methodology of the METEOR-China study

BACKGROUND: The beneficial effect of statins on atherosclerosis and cardiovascular outcomes has been well established. The Measuring Effects on intima media Thickness: an Evaluation Of Rosuvastatin (METEOR) global study demonstrated that a 2-year orally administered treatment with rosuvastatin 40 mg daily significantly slowed the progression of carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT) compared to placebo. The current METEOR-China study is designed to evaluate the effect of rosuvastatin 20 mg daily versus placebo on the progression of atherosclerosis measured by CIMT in asymptomatic Chinese subjects. METHODS: This is a phase 3, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicentre parallel-group study. Asymptomatic Chinese subjects with a 10-year ischaemic cardiovascular disease (ICVD) risk < 10% will be recruited at 25 study sites. They will be treated with rosuvastatin 20 mg or placebo for 104 weeks. The primary endpoint is the annualised rate of change in CIMT measured by B-mode ultrasonography. Secondary endpoints include the annualised rate of change in CIMT at three different sections of the carotid artery and changes in the serum lipid profile. Safety parameters will also be assessed. CONCLUSION: The study will evaluate whether rosuvastatin 20 mg slows the progression of CIMT in asymptomatic Chinese subjects at low risk of ICVD. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02546323 . Registered on September 10, 2015

Fuzzy observer-based repetitive tracking control for nonlinear systems

This article is concerned with the periodic tracking control problem for nonlinear systems. First, the Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy model is employed to describe the nonlinear control systems. Second, considering the partly unmeasurable states of the system, a novel fuzzy observer-based repetitive controller, which is the mixed controller of the fuzzy observer-based controller and the fuzzy repetitive controller, is designed to deal with the periodic tracking control problem. To reduce the conservatism and increase the feasible solution space of the stabilization conditions, a new fuzzy relaxed matrix technique is developed by introducing some relaxed matrices in the derivative of the fuzzy normalized membership function. Then, the fuzzy Lyapunov functional with an additional separation parameter and the augmented fuzzy matrix technique (the interactions of fuzzy observer subsystems) are proposed such that the delay-dependent stability condition of the closed-loop system in the form of linear matrix inequality is obtained with less conservatism. It is worth noting that due to introducing an additional parameter in the fuzzy Lyapunov functional, the fuzzy controller and fuzzy observer can be separately designed, which largely enhances the flexibility of design with low computational complexity. Finally, three examples are provided to illustrate the effectiveness and less conservatism of the proposed method

Dynamic event-based control of nonlinear stochastic systems

In this paper, the event-based control problems for nonlinear stochastic systems are investigated. First, a novel condition for stochastic input-to-state stability is established. Then, the dynamic event-triggered control approach is proposed and the stochastic stability of the resulting closed-loop system is also proved. Next, a new dynamic self-triggering mechanism is developed and the additional internal dynamic variable is designed according to the predicted value of the system state and error, which ensures that the closed-loop system is stochastically stable. It is shown that the lower bounds of interexecution times by the proposed dynamic event-triggered and self-triggered control approaches are all larger than zero, and the so-called Zeno phenomenon is avoided. Compared with the static event-triggering and self-triggering results, the interexecution times by the proposed dynamic approaches are prolonged on the whole. Two simulation examples are provided to show the efficiency of the proposed approaches

AODR: An Automatic On-Demand Retransmission Scheme for WIA-FA Networks

In Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSNs), monitoring data generated by field devices are supposed to be delivered to the gateway with high reliability and low latency. However, most of the existing industrial wireless standards are based on IEEE 802.15.4, offering a very limited data rate, which prevents their adoption in critical industrial applications. Based on IEEE 802.11, a recent international standard WIA-FA is proposed to address higher communication requirements in factory automation. In this paper, we study the timeslot allocation for retransmissions in the WIA-FA network. Specifically, we first design a novel superframe to support the Negative ACKnowledgment (NACK)-based retransmission mode in the WIA-FA network, and build a network model which considers the uplink and downlink packet losses simultaneously. Then, we analyze the three major drawbacks of the default NACK-based retransmission scheme in WIA-FA and propose an Automatic On-Demand Retransmission (AODR) scheme. Finally, we give a detailed reliability analysis of the proposed AODR scheme, and prove the relationship between the transmission reliability and critical factors (e.g., the channel condition and the length of the superframe) in the WIA-FA network. Simulation results show that the proposed AODR scheme outperforms existing works in terms of transmission reliability and timeliness for different channel conditions

Functional observer-based finite-time adaptive ISMC for continuous systems with unknown nonlinear function

This paper is concerned with functional observer-based finite-time adaptive integral sliding mode control (ISMC) for continuous systems with unknown nonlinear function. First, a novel finite-time ISMC framework is established based on the functional observer whose parameters can be directly found. Second, an adaptive compensator is designed to counteract the effect of the unknown nonlinear function such that the composite integral sliding mode controller ensures that the closed-loop system reaches boundedness in a predefined finite time. Moreover, some sufficient conditions in the form of matrix inequalities are proposed to guarantee the finite-time boundedness with H∞ performance (FTB-H∞) over the sliding phase and the reaching phase of the closed-loop system. Then the FTB-H∞ conditions over the whole finite-time interval are also provided. Due to introducing more degrees of freedom in the functional observer, the designed finite-time integral sliding mode controller is more flexible and less conservative. Finally, a simulation example is given to show the validity of the proposed method