Design and baseline characteristics of the finerenone in reducing cardiovascular mortality and morbidity in diabetic kidney disease trial

Background: Among people with diabetes, those with kidney disease have exceptionally high rates of cardiovascular (CV) morbidity and mortality and progression of their underlying kidney disease. Finerenone is a novel, nonsteroidal, selective mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist that has shown to reduce albuminuria in type 2 diabetes (T2D) patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) while revealing only a low risk of hyperkalemia. However, the effect of finerenone on CV and renal outcomes has not yet been investigated in long-term trials. Patients and Methods: The Finerenone in Reducing CV Mortality and Morbidity in Diabetic Kidney Disease (FIGARO-DKD) trial aims to assess the efficacy and safety of finerenone compared to placebo at reducing clinically important CV and renal outcomes in T2D patients with CKD. FIGARO-DKD is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group, event-driven trial running in 47 countries with an expected duration of approximately 6 years. FIGARO-DKD randomized 7,437 patients with an estimated glomerular filtration rate >= 25 mL/min/1.73 m(2) and albuminuria (urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio >= 30 to <= 5,000 mg/g). The study has at least 90% power to detect a 20% reduction in the risk of the primary outcome (overall two-sided significance level alpha = 0.05), the composite of time to first occurrence of CV death, nonfatal myocardial infarction, nonfatal stroke, or hospitalization for heart failure. Conclusions: FIGARO-DKD will determine whether an optimally treated cohort of T2D patients with CKD at high risk of CV and renal events will experience cardiorenal benefits with the addition of finerenone to their treatment regimen. Trial Registration: EudraCT number: 2015-000950-39; ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02545049

Long-term survival of patients with CLL after allogeneic transplantation: A report from the European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation

Even with the availability of targeted drugs, allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (allo-HCT) is the only therapy with curative potential for patients with CLL. Cure can be assessed by comparing long-term survival of patients to the matched general population. Using data from 2589 patients who received allo-HCT between 2000 and 2010, we used landmark analyses and methods from relative survival analysis to calculate excess mortality compared with an age-, sex- and calendar year-matched general population. Estimated event-free survival, overall survival and non-relapse mortality (NRM) 10 years after allo-HCT were 28% (95% confidence interval (CI), 25-31), 35% (95% CI, 32-38) and 40% (95% CI, 37-42), respectively. Patients who passed the 5-year landmark event-free survival (N=394) had a 79% probability (95% CI, 73-85) of surviving the subsequent 5 years without an event. Relapse and NRM contributed equally to treatment failure. Five-year mortality for 45- and 65-year-old reference patients who were event-free at the 5-year landmark was 8% and 47% compared with 3% and 14% in the matched general population, respectively. The prospect of long-term disease-free survival remains an argument to consider allo-HCT for young patients with high-risk CLL, and programs to understand and prevent late causes of failure for long-term survivors are warranted, especially for older patients

Search for heavy resonances in the W/Z-tagged dijet mass spectrum in pp collisions at 7 TeV

A search has been made for massive resonances decaying into a quark and a vector boson, qW or qZ, or a pair of vector bosons, WW, WZ, or ZZ, where each vector boson decays to hadronic final states. This search is based on a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 fb 121 of proton\u2013proton collisions collected in the CMS experiment at the LHC in 2011 at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV. For sufficiently heavy resonances the decay products of each vector boson are merged into a single jet, and the event effectively has a dijet topology. The background from QCD dijet events is reduced using recently developed techniques that resolve jet substructure. A 95% CL lower limit is set on the mass of excited quark resonances decaying into qW (qZ) at 2.38 TeV (2.15 TeV) and upper limits are set on the cross section for resonances decaying to qW, qZ, WW, WZ, or ZZ final states

Search for long-lived particles in events with photons and missing energy in proton\u2013proton collisions at sqrt(s)=7 TeV

Results are presented from a search for long-lived neutralinos decaying into a photon and an invisible particle, a signature associated with gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking in supersymmetric models. The analysis is based on a 4.9 inverse femtobarn sample of proton-proton collisions at 1as = 7 TeV, collected with the CMS detector at the LHC. The missing transverse energy and the time of arrival of the photon at the electromagnetic calorimeter are used to search for an excess of events over the expected background. No significant excess is observed, and lower limits at the 95% confidence level are obtained on the mass of the lightest neutralino, m(neutralino) > 220 GeV (for c tau 6000 mm (for m(neutralino) < 150 GeV)

Energy calibration and resolution of the CMS electromagnetic calorimeter in pp collisions at s\sqrt{s} = 7 TeV

The energy calibration and resolution of the electromagnetic calorimeter (ECAL) of the CMS detector have been determined using proton-proton collision data from LHC operation in 2010 and 2011 at a centre-of-mass energy of sqrt(s)=7 TeV with integrated luminosities of about 5 inverse femtobarns. Crucial aspects of detector operation, such as the environmental stability, alignment, and synchronization, are presented. The in-situ calibration procedures are discussed in detail and include the maintenance of the calibration in the challenging radiation environment inside the CMS detector. The energy resolution for electrons from Z-boson decays is better than 2% in the central region of the ECAL barrel (for pseudorapidity abs(eta)<0.8) and is 2-5% elsewhere. The derived energy resolution for photons from 125 GeV Higgs boson decays varies across the barrel from 1.1% to 2.6% and from 2.2% to 5% in the entraps. The calibration of the absolute energy is determined from Z to e+e- decays to a precision of 0.4% in the barrel and 0.8% in the endcaps