Effect of systemic sclerosis on left ventricular long-axis motion and left ventricular mass assessed by magnetic resonance

The aim of this study was to assess the effect of scleroderma on left ventricular mass and subendocardial function using cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) to determine parameters reflecting early dysfunction from fibrosis. Fifteen patients,vith a history of scleroderma had left ventricular mass measured with standard techniques and regional subendocardial contractile function assessed using myocardial velocity mapping in the basal short-axis plane with long-axis sensitized velocity mapping. Peak myocardial velocities in systole and diastole were measured to reflect systolic and diastolic function. The variance in the regional myocardial velocity was determined as a parameter of function heterogeneity around the ventricle. The results were compared with 19 healthy volunteers without a history of cardiovascular disease. In 10 patients, pulmonary transfer-factor was measured using a single-breath helium dilution technique. The duration of scleroderma correlated with left ventricular mass (r = 0.7, p < 0.05), the coefficient of variation of velocity (r = 0.63, p < 0.05), and inversely with the mean left ventricular diastolic long-axis velocity (r = -0.63, p < 0.05). There was also a correlation between left ventricular diastolic long-axis velocity and the pulmonary transfer factor (r = 0.7, p < 0.05). Trends suggested differences between control subjects and scleroderma patients for mean systolic (64 vs. 49 mm/sec, p = 0.09) and diastolic (90 vs. 72 mm/sec, p = 0.07) velocities, as well as velocity variance (26 vs. 33, p = 0.09). in conclusion, there is a relationship between duration of scleroderma and both left ventricular mass and diastolic function, which may result from increased myocardial fibrosis. Trends suggest absolute differences in functional values with control subjects that reflect impaired diastolic and systolic function, with greater regional heterogeneity that is consistent with nonuniform collagen deposition, bur a larger sample size is required to confirm this. CMR should be explored further as a technique for monitoring myocardial involvement in scleroderma noninvasivel

Search for the b(b)over-bar decay of the Standard Model Higgs boson in associated (W/Z)H production with the ATLAS detector

A search for the b (b) over bar decay of the Standard Model Higgs boson is performed with the ATLAS experiment using the full dataset recorded at the LHC in Run 1. The integrated luminosities used are 4.7 and 20.3 fb(-1) from pp collisions at root s = 7 and 8 TeV, respectively. The processes considered are associated (WIZ)H production, where W -> e nu/mu nu, Z -> ee/mu mu, and Z -> nu nu. The observed (expected) deviation from the backgroundonly hypothesis corresponds to a significance of 1.4 (2.6) standard deviations and the ratio of the measured signal yield to the Standard Model expectation is found to be mu = 0.52 +/- 0.32 (stat.) +/- 0.24 (syst.) for a Higgs boson mass of 125.36 GeV. The analysis procedure is validated by a measurement of the yield of (W/Z)Z production with Z -> b (b) over bar in the same final states as for the Higgs boson search, from which the ratio of the observed signal yield to the Standard Model expectation is found to be 0.74 +/- 0.09 (stat.) +/- 0.14 (syst.)