Chorioretinal thinning in chronic kidney disease links to inflammation and endothelial dysfunction

BACKGROUND. Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is strongly associated with cardiovascular disease and there is an established association between vasculopathy affecting the kidney and eye. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a novel, rapid method for high-definition imaging of the retina and choroid. Its use in patients at high cardiovascular disease risk remains unexplored. METHODS. We used the new SPECTRALIS OCT machine to examine retinal and retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) thickness, macular volume, and choroidal thickness in a prospective cross-sectional study in 150 subjects: 50 patients with hypertension (defined as a documented clinic BP greater than or equal to 140/90 mmHg (prior to starting any treatment) with no underlying cause identified); 50 with CKD (estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) 8–125 ml/min/1.73 m(2)); and 50 matched healthy controls. We excluded those with diabetes. The same, masked ophthalmologist carried out each study. Plasma IL-6, TNF-α , asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA), and endothelin-1 (ET-1), as measures of inflammation and endothelial function, were also assessed. RESULTS. Retinal thickness, macular volume, and choroidal thickness were all reduced in CKD compared with hypertensive and healthy subjects (for retinal thickness and macular volume P < 0.0001 for CKD vs. healthy and for CKD vs. hypertensive subjects; for choroidal thickness P < 0.001 for CKD vs. healthy and for CKD vs. hypertensive subjects). RNFL thickness did not differ between groups. Interestingly, a thinner choroid was associated with a lower eGFR (r = 0.35, P <0.0001) and, in CKD, with proteinuria (r = –0.58, P < 0.001) as well as increased circulating C-reactive protein (r = –0.57, P = 0.0002), IL-6 (r = –0.40, P < 0.01), ADMA (r = –0.37, P = 0.02), and ET-1 (r = –0.44, P < 0.01). Finally, choroidal thinning was associated with renal histological inflammation and arterial stiffness. In a model of hypertension, choroidal thinning was seen only in the presence of renal injury. CONCLUSIONS. Chorioretinal thinning in CKD is associated with lower eGFR and greater proteinuria, but not BP. Larger studies, in more targeted groups of patients, are now needed to clarify whether these eye changes reflect the natural history of CKD. Similarly, the associations with arterial stiffness, inflammation, and endothelial dysfunction warrant further examination. TRIAL REGISTRATION. Registration number at www.clinicalTrials.gov: NCT02132741. SOURCE OF FUNDING. TR was supported by a bursary from the Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam. JJMHvB was supported by a bursary from the Utrecht University. JRC is supported by a Rowling Scholarship. SB was supported by a Wellcome Trust funded clinical research fellowship from the Scottish Translational Medicine and Therapeutics Initiative, and by a Rowling Scholarship, at the time of this work. ND is supported by a British Heart Foundation Intermediate Clinical Research Fellowship (FS/13/30/29994)

Chorioretinal thinning in chronic kidney disease links to inflammation and endothelial dysfunction

The Engineering and Sciences Library was formed in 1990,incorporating the C. S. Davis Mathematics Library and the Thomas Parnell Memorial Physics Library. In 1997 the library was refurbished and merged with the Geology Library collection. The library was named the Dorothy Hill Physical Sciences and Engineering Library, after the late Professor Dorothy Hill, and opened officially on 26 August 1997. In 2011, the name was changed to the Dorothy Hill Engineering and Sciences Library, when the collections were merged with those of the Biological Sciences Library

Search for jet extinction in the inclusive jet-pT spectrum from proton-proton collisions at s=8 TeV

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published articles title, journal citation, and DOI.The first search at the LHC for the extinction of QCD jet production is presented, using data collected with the CMS detector corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 10.7  fb−1 of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV. The extinction model studied in this analysis is motivated by the search for signatures of strong gravity at the TeV scale (terascale gravity) and assumes the existence of string couplings in the strong-coupling limit. In this limit, the string model predicts the suppression of all high-transverse-momentum standard model processes, including jet production, beyond a certain energy scale. To test this prediction, the measured transverse-momentum spectrum is compared to the theoretical prediction of the standard model. No significant deficit of events is found at high transverse momentum. A 95% confidence level lower limit of 3.3 TeV is set on the extinction mass scale

Searches for electroweak neutralino and chargino production in channels with Higgs, Z, and W bosons in pp collisions at 8 TeV

Searches for supersymmetry (SUSY) are presented based on the electroweak pair production of neutralinos and charginos, leading to decay channels with Higgs, Z, and W bosons and undetected lightest SUSY particles (LSPs). The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of about 19.5 fb(-1) of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV collected in 2012 with the CMS detector at the LHC. The main emphasis is neutralino pair production in which each neutralino decays either to a Higgs boson (h) and an LSP or to a Z boson and an LSP, leading to hh, hZ, and ZZ states with missing transverse energy (E-T(miss)). A second aspect is chargino-neutralino pair production, leading to hW states with E-T(miss). The decays of a Higgs boson to a bottom-quark pair, to a photon pair, and to final states with leptons are considered in conjunction with hadronic and leptonic decay modes of the Z and W bosons. No evidence is found for supersymmetric particles, and 95% confidence level upper limits are evaluated for the respective pair production cross sections and for neutralino and chargino mass values

Forest type interacts with milkweed invasion to affect spider communities

Abstract Non-native tree plantations constitute a large part of forestation worldwide. Plantations are prone to invasion by exotic herbaceous plant species due to habitat properties, including understory vegetation structure. We established 40 sampling sites in 10 plantation forests. Sites were selected according to tree species (native poplar forests and exotic pine plantations) and common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) density (invaded and non-invaded sites) in a full factorial design. We collected spiders with pitfall traps. We found a significant effect of A. syriaca invasion on spider functional diversity (Rao's quadratic entropy), with invaded sites having a lower functional diversity than non-invaded sites. A larger effect of invasion with A. syriaca on the RaoQ of spiders was observed in pine compared to poplar plantations. Spider species were larger, and web-building spiders were more frequent in poplar forests than in pine plantations. We found no effect of A. syriaca invasion on species richness or abundance of spiders. Species composition of spider assemblages in the two forest types was clearly separated according to non-metric multidimensional scaling. We identified seven species associated with pine plantations and six species associated with poplar plantations. The similar species richness and the higher functional diversity of non-invaded sites suggested that these trait states were less similar than invaded sites and that functionally different species were present. In contrast, the invaded sites had lower functional diversities and thus more uniform trait state compositions, suggesting that environmental filtering played an important role in species sorting, making invaded plantations low-quality secondary habitats for the original spider fauna