Coffee, Atrial Fibrillation, and Circulating Ceramides in Patients with Chronic Heart Failure

Ceramides are sphingolipids that play roles as structural lipids and as second messengers in biological processes. Circulating ceramides are influenced by diet/food and predict major cardiovascular (CV) events, such as atrial fibrillation (AF). In 1227 patients with symptomatic chronic heart failure (HF), an association between diet and ceramides was found for coffee consumption of 653 cups and Cer(d18:1/24:0). Increased Cer(d18:1/24:0) was associated with lower incident AF (24.3% vs 15.4% tertile 1 vs 3, P = 0.016) and lower CV mortality (28.4% vs 12.0% tertile 1 vs 3, P < 0.0001). For coffee consumption, only an association with incident AF was found (24.5% never, 5.2% 653 cups). These inverse associations with AF were confirmed in survival analyses corrected for biomarkers (Cer(d18:1/24:0) HR: 0.79, P = 0.018; coffee consumption HR: 0.22, P = 0.001). In conclusion, higher coffee intake was associated with a lower risk of incident AF and with higher concentrations of Cer(d18:1/24:0). Cer(d18:1/24:0) was inversely associated to risk of AF

Report on Footprint of Passive Control Systems

Due to the serious impacts on public health, it is essential to control air pollution, especially in and around cities where a majority of the world\u2019s population lives and pollution concentrations are typically much higher than in rural areas. Passive control systems (PCSs) are interventions for reducing air pollution, which include low boundary walls, green infrastructure (GI), and photocatalytic coating. In this report, we analyse the footprint and the benefits of implementing PCSs as interventions to reduce personal exposure to air pollution in the built environment, with a specific focus on their application in iSCAPE cities. In addition to discussing the available literature, this report provides the methodologies for the assessment and evaluation of PCSs interventions. This report summarises the iSCAPE intervention evaluation methods, sites description, instruments setup and experimental protocols for the potential of using physical passive controls (low boundary walls) and green infrastructure (trees, hedges, green walls and/or roofs), and the utilisation of photo-catalytic coatings (in road tiles or walls). This report considers a SWOT (strengths \u2013 weaknesses \u2013 opportunities \u2013 threats) analysis for each type of PCS intervention