Biogene riffen in de Noordzee : actuele en potentiële verspreiding van rifvormende schelpdieren en wormen

Vanuit het beleid is er behoefte aan ruimtelijke informatie over actuele en potentiële voorkomens van een aantal rifbouwende soorten in de Nederlandse Noordzee in verband met bescherming (Kaderrichtlijn Mariene Strategie, Natura 2000, OSPAR) en de geplande uitrol van windenergie op zee en integraal Noordzeebeleid (Strategische Agenda Noordzee 2030). De huidige en toekomstige windparken bieden mogelijk kansen voor herstel van biogene riffen, indien er geen bodemberoerende visserij plaatsvindt. In dit rapport wordt door middel van kaarten en een tabel de (potentiële) verspreiding van een aantal rifbouwende soorten in de Nederlandse Noordzee inzichtelijk gemaakt. Per kaart is een korte toelichting opgenomen. De kaarten en toelichting per kaart zullen ook digitaal beschikbaar worden gesteld in het Informatiehuis Marien (www.informatiehuismarien.nl/open-data). De gebruikte gegevens zijn afkomstig uit vissurveys en schelpdiersurveys uitgevoerd door Wageningen Marine Research, en uit verschillende andere inventarisaties. Verder is er een aantal voorspellende kaarten gemaakt van het voorkomen van rifbouwende soorten in de Noordzee, op basis van modellering met omgevingsvariabelen. Gegevens worden gepresenteerd voor platte oester (Ostrea edulis), mossel (Mytilus edulis), paardenmossel (Modiolus modiolus), zandkokerwormen (Sabellaria sp.), gestekelde zandkokerworm (Sabellaria spinulosa) en schelpkokerworm (Lanice conchilega)

Genetic Evidence for a Causal Role of Serum Phosphate in Coronary Artery Calcification:The Rotterdam Study

BACKGROUND: Hyperphosphatemia has been associated with coronary artery calcification (CAC) mostly in chronic kidney dis-ease, but the association between phosphate levels within the normal phosphate range and CAC is unclear. Our objectives were to evaluate associations between phosphate levels and CAC among men and women from the general population and assess causality through Mendelian randomization. METHODS AND RESULTS: CAC, measured by electron-beam computed tomography, and serum phosphate levels were assessed in 1889 individuals from the RS (Rotterdam Study). Phenotypic associations were tested through linear models adjusted for age, body mass index, blood pressure, smoking, prevalent cardiovascular disease and diabetes, 25-hydroxyvitamin D, total calcium, C-reactive protein, glucose, and total cholesterol: high-density lipoprotein cholesterol ratio. Mendelian randomiza-tion was implemented through an allele score including 8 phosphate-related single-nucleotide polymorphisms. In phenotypic analyses, serum phosphate (per 1 SD) was associated with CAC with evidence for sex interaction (Pinteraction =0.003) (men β, 0.44 [95% CI, 0.30– 0.59]; P=3×10−9; n=878; women β, 0.24 [95% CI, 0.08– 0.40]; P=0.003; n=1011). Exclusion of hyperphos-phatemia, chronic kidney disease (estimated glomerular filtration rate &lt;60 mL/min per 1.73 m2) and prevalent cardiovascular disease yielded similar results. In Mendelian randomization analyses, instrumented phosphate was associated with CAC (total population β, 0.93 [95% CI: 0.07–1.79]; P=0.034; n=1693), even after exclusion of hyperphosphatemia, chronic kidney disease and prevalent cardiovascular disease (total population β, 1.23 [95% CI, 0.17– 2.28]; P=0.023; n=1224). CONCLUSIONS: Serum phosphate was associated with CAC in the general population with stronger effects in men. Mendelian randomization findings support a causal relation, also for serum phosphate and CAC in subjects without hyperphosphatemia, chronic kidney disease, and cardiovascular disease. Further research into underlying mechanisms of this association and sex differences is needed.</p

Fouling community composition on a pilot floating solar-energy installation in the coastal Dutch North Sea

The increasing need for renewable energy has led to the transition of renewable energy devices to the marine environment. Currently, mainly offshore wind farms have been completely developed and are operational in the North Sea. The solar energy sector is also rapidly evolving and floating photovoltaics are continuously created and deployed. In this study, we investigated the colonisation patterns and community changes with time of fouling fauna on the first floating photovoltaics in the coastal Dutch North Sea. Samples were collected by divers from the underwater side of 4 floaters, coated with different anti-fouling techniques (Intersleek, GreenPowerNano PPDura, Finsulate and Pato) at two different moments, shortly after the deployment of the floaters and approximately a year later. In total, 72 fouling taxa were identified on the floaters, from which ca. 11% are known to be non-indigenous species for the region. The anti-fouling coating Intersleek seemed to work the most efficiently against fouling colonisation, since the fouling community sampled from this floater contained the least taxa. However, the small number of samples collected from the different floaters did not allow for a direct comparison between the anti-fouling coatings. The communities evolved with time, with young communities accommodating a larger number of individuals and old communities having less individuals but higher biomass, indicating that the organisms become bigger in size and compete for the available space. Nevertheless, the communities had not reached a stable climax yet, while this process might take multiple years due to the dynamic environment in which floating photovoltaics are deployed. Monitoring the fouling communities occurring on floating photovoltaics in the North Sea for a long-term is necessary to understand the effects of these new man-made structures on the marine environment, especially since floating photovoltaics are moving to offshore locations and will be possibly co-located with offshore wind farms in the future

Frailty is associated with in-hospital mortality in older hospitalised COVID-19 patients in the Netherlands:the COVID-OLD study

BACKGROUND: During the first wave of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, older patients had an increased risk of hospitalisation and death. Reports on the association of frailty with poor outcome have been conflicting. OBJECTIVE: The aim of the present study was to investigate the independent association between frailty and in-hospital mortality in older hospitalised COVID-19 patients in the Netherlands. METHODS: This was a multicentre retrospective cohort study in 15 hospitals in the Netherlands, including all patients aged ≥70 years, who were hospitalised with clinically confirmed COVID-19 between February and May 2020. Data were collected on demographics, co-morbidity, disease severity and Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS). Primary outcome was in-hospital mortality. RESULTS: A total of 1,376 patients were included (median age 78 years (interquartile range 74-84), 60% male). In total, 499 (38%) patients died during hospital admission. Parameters indicating presence of frailty (CFS 6-9) were associated with more co-morbidities, shorter symptom duration upon presentation (median 4 versus 7 days), lower oxygen demand and lower levels of C-reactive protein. In multivariable analyses, the CFS was independently associated with in-hospital mortality: compared with patients with CFS 1-3, patients with CFS 4-5 had a two times higher risk (odds ratio (OR) 2.0 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.3-3.0)) and patients with CFS 6-9 had a three times higher risk of in-hospital mortality (OR 2.8 (95% CI 1.8-4.3)). CONCLUSIONS: The in-hospital mortality of older hospitalised COVID-19 patients in the Netherlands was 38%. Frailty was independently associated with higher in-hospital mortality, even though COVID-19 patients with frailty presented earlier to the hospital with less severe symptoms

Genomewide Association Studies of Stroke

The genes underlying the risk of stroke in the general population remain undetermined

The Rotterdam Study: 2012 objectives and design update

The Rotterdam Study is a prospective cohort study ongoing since 1990 in the city of Rotterdam in The Netherlands. The study targets cardiovascular, endocrine, hepatic, neurological, ophthalmic, psychiatric, dermatological, oncological, and respiratory diseases. As of 2008, 14,926 subjects aged 45 years or over comprise the Rotterdam Study cohort. The findings of the Rotterdam Study have been presented in over a 1,000 research articles and reports (see www.erasmus-epidemiology.nl/rotterdamstudy). This article gives the rationale of the study and its design. It also presents a summary of the major findings and an update of the objectives and methods

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Enhancing rare variant interpretation in inherited arrhythmias through quantitative analysis of consortium disease cohorts and population controls.

PURPOSE: Stringent variant interpretation guidelines can lead to high rates of variants of uncertain significance (VUS) for genetically heterogeneous disease like long QT syndrome (LQTS) and Brugada syndrome (BrS). Quantitative and disease-specific customization of American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics/Association for Molecular Pathology (ACMG/AMP) guidelines can address this false negative rate. METHODS: We compared rare variant frequencies from 1847 LQTS (KCNQ1/KCNH2/SCN5A) and 3335 BrS (SCN5A) cases from the International LQTS/BrS Genetics Consortia to population-specific gnomAD data and developed disease-specific criteria for ACMG/AMP evidence classes-rarity (PM2/BS1 rules) and case enrichment of individual (PS4) and domain-specific (PM1) variants. RESULTS: Rare SCN5A variant prevalence differed between European (20.8%) and Japanese (8.9%) BrS patients (p = 5.7 × 10-18) and diagnosis with spontaneous (28.7%) versus induced (15.8%) Brugada type 1 electrocardiogram (ECG) (p = 1.3 × 10-13). Ion channel transmembrane regions and specific N-terminus (KCNH2) and C-terminus (KCNQ1/KCNH2) domains were characterized by high enrichment of case variants and >95% probability of pathogenicity. Applying the customized rules, 17.4% of European BrS and 74.8% of European LQTS cases had (likely) pathogenic variants, compared with estimated diagnostic yields (case excess over gnomAD) of 19.2%/82.1%, reducing VUS prevalence to close to background rare variant frequency. CONCLUSION: Large case-control data sets enable quantitative implementation of ACMG/AMP guidelines and increased sensitivity for inherited arrhythmia genetic testing