Percutaneous renal artery denervation in patients with chronic systolic heart failure: A randomized controlled trial

Background: Renal denervation (RDN) is as an effective treatment for heart failure (HF), but its effects on cardiac function of patients with HF are not well documented. Here, the aim was to investigate RDN’s effect on patients with chronic systolic HF, by conducting a single-center, prospective, randomized, and controlled study. Methods: Sixty patients with chronic systolic HF were randomly assigned to the RDN or control groups, receiving percutaneous catheter-based RDN with radiofrequency ablation and drug treatment, respectively. All patients performed a 6-minute walk test, echocardiography, blood pressure measurement, and biochemical test, at both baseline and in a 6-month follow up. Results: Over 6-month follow up, patients in RDN group showed a decrease in N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (440.1 ± 226.5 pg/mL vs. 790.8 ± 287.0 pg/mL, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 1.14), an increase in left ventricular ejection fraction (39.1 ± 7.3% vs. 35.6 ± 3.3%, p = 0.017, Cohen’s d = 0.61), improved New York Heart Association class assessment (p = 0.01, Cohen’s d = 0.66), and decreased blood pressures (p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.91), without reporting hypotension and syncope amaurosis. No significant between-group difference was observed for glomerular filtration rate and heart rate. Conclusions: Renal denervation which effectively and safely improves patient’s cardiac function as well as exercise tolerance, could be considered as an effective treatment for chronic systolic HF

Effect of organic acids on the growth and lipid accumulation of oleaginous yeast Trichosporon fermentans

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Microbial lipids have drawn increasing attention in recent years as promising raw materials for biodiesel production, and the use of lignocellulosic hydrolysates as carbon sources seems to be a feasible strategy for cost-effective lipid fermentation with oleaginous microorganisms on a large scale. During the hydrolysis of lignocellulosic materials with dilute acid, however, various kinds of inhibitors, especially large amounts of organic acids, will be produced, which substantially decrease the fermentability of lignocellulosic hydrolysates. To overcome the inhibitory effects of organic acids, it is critical to understand their impact on the growth and lipid accumulation of oleaginous microorganisms.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In our present work, we investigated for the first time the effect of ten representative organic acids in lignocellulosic hydrolysates on the growth and lipid accumulation of oleaginous yeast <it>Trichosporon fermentans </it>cells. In contrast to previous reports, we found that the toxicity of the organic acids to the cells was not directly related to their hydrophobicity. It is worth noting that most organic acids tested were less toxic than aldehydes to the cells, and some could even stimulate the growth and lipid accumulation at a low concentration. Unlike aldehydes, most binary combinations of organic acids exerted no synergistic inhibitory effects on lipid production. The presence of organic acids decelerated the consumption of glucose, whereas it influenced the utilization of xylose in a different and complicated way. In addition, all the organic acids tested, except furoic acid, inhibited the malic activity of <it>T. fermentans</it>. Furthermore, the inhibition of organic acids on cell growth was dependent more on inoculum size, temperature and initial pH than on lipid content.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This work provides some meaningful information about the effect of organic acid in lignocellulosic hydrolysates on the lipid production of oleaginous yeast, which is helpful for optimization of biomass hydrolysis processes, detoxified pretreatment of hydrolysates and lipid production using lignocellulosic materials.</p

A thermodynamically consistent quasi-particle model without density-dependent infinity of the vacuum zero point energy

In this paper, we generalize the improved quasi-particle model proposed in J. Cao et al., [ Phys. Lett. B {\bf711}, 65 (2012)] from finite temperature and zero chemical potential to the case of finite chemical potential and zero temperature, and calculate the equation of state (EOS) for (2+1) flavor Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) at zero temperature and high density. We first calculate the partition function at finite temperature and chemical potential, then go to the limit $T=0$ and obtain the equation of state (EOS) for cold and dense QCD, which is important for the study of neutron stars. Furthermore, we use this EOS to calculate the quark-number density, the energy density, the quark-number susceptibility and the speed of sound at zero temperature and finite chemical potential and compare our results with the corresponding ones in the existing literature

Geometric effects of a quarter of corrugated torus

In the spirit of the thin-layer quantization scheme, we give the effective Shr\"{o}dinger equation for a particle confined to a corrugated torus, in which the geometric potential is substantially changed by corrugation. We find the attractive wells reconstructed by the corrugation not being at identical depths, which is strikingly different from that of a corrugated nanotube, especially in the inner side of the torus. By numerically calculating the transmission probability, we find that the resonant tunneling peaks and the transmission gaps are merged and broadened by the corrugation of the inner side of torus. These results show that the quarter corrugated torus can be used not only to connect two tubes with different radiuses in different directions, but also to filter the particles with particular incident~energies.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figure