RICORS2040 : The need for collaborative research in chronic kidney disease

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a silent and poorly known killer. The current concept of CKD is relatively young and uptake by the public, physicians and health authorities is not widespread. Physicians still confuse CKD with chronic kidney insufficiency or failure. For the wider public and health authorities, CKD evokes kidney replacement therapy (KRT). In Spain, the prevalence of KRT is 0.13%. Thus health authorities may consider CKD a non-issue: very few persons eventually need KRT and, for those in whom kidneys fail, the problem is 'solved' by dialysis or kidney transplantation. However, KRT is the tip of the iceberg in the burden of CKD. The main burden of CKD is accelerated ageing and premature death. The cut-off points for kidney function and kidney damage indexes that define CKD also mark an increased risk for all-cause premature death. CKD is the most prevalent risk factor for lethal coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and the factor that most increases the risk of death in COVID-19, after old age. Men and women undergoing KRT still have an annual mortality that is 10- to 100-fold higher than similar-age peers, and life expectancy is shortened by ~40 years for young persons on dialysis and by 15 years for young persons with a functioning kidney graft. CKD is expected to become the fifth greatest global cause of death by 2040 and the second greatest cause of death in Spain before the end of the century, a time when one in four Spaniards will have CKD. However, by 2022, CKD will become the only top-15 global predicted cause of death that is not supported by a dedicated well-funded Centres for Biomedical Research (CIBER) network structure in Spain. Realizing the underestimation of the CKD burden of disease by health authorities, the Decade of the Kidney initiative for 2020-2030 was launched by the American Association of Kidney Patients and the European Kidney Health Alliance. Leading Spanish kidney researchers grouped in the kidney collaborative research network Red de Investigación Renal have now applied for the Redes de Investigación Cooperativa Orientadas a Resultados en Salud (RICORS) call for collaborative research in Spain with the support of the Spanish Society of Nephrology, Federación Nacional de Asociaciones para la Lucha Contra las Enfermedades del Riñón and ONT: RICORS2040 aims to prevent the dire predictions for the global 2040 burden of CKD from becoming true

Risk profiles and one-year outcomes of patients with newly diagnosed atrial fibrillation in India: Insights from the GARFIELD-AF Registry.

BACKGROUND: The Global Anticoagulant Registry in the FIELD-Atrial Fibrillation (GARFIELD-AF) is an ongoing prospective noninterventional registry, which is providing important information on the baseline characteristics, treatment patterns, and 1-year outcomes in patients with newly diagnosed non-valvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF). This report describes data from Indian patients recruited in this registry. METHODS AND RESULTS: A total of 52,014 patients with newly diagnosed AF were enrolled globally; of these, 1388 patients were recruited from 26 sites within India (2012-2016). In India, the mean age was 65.8 years at diagnosis of NVAF. Hypertension was the most prevalent risk factor for AF, present in 68.5% of patients from India and in 76.3% of patients globally (P < 0.001). Diabetes and coronary artery disease (CAD) were prevalent in 36.2% and 28.1% of patients as compared with global prevalence of 22.2% and 21.6%, respectively (P < 0.001 for both). Antiplatelet therapy was the most common antithrombotic treatment in India. With increasing stroke risk, however, patients were more likely to receive oral anticoagulant therapy [mainly vitamin K antagonist (VKA)], but average international normalized ratio (INR) was lower among Indian patients [median INR value 1.6 (interquartile range {IQR}: 1.3-2.3) versus 2.3 (IQR 1.8-2.8) (P < 0.001)]. Compared with other countries, patients from India had markedly higher rates of all-cause mortality [7.68 per 100 person-years (95% confidence interval 6.32-9.35) vs 4.34 (4.16-4.53), P < 0.0001], while rates of stroke/systemic embolism and major bleeding were lower after 1 year of follow-up. CONCLUSION: Compared to previously published registries from India, the GARFIELD-AF registry describes clinical profiles and outcomes in Indian patients with AF of a different etiology. The registry data show that compared to the rest of the world, Indian AF patients are younger in age and have more diabetes and CAD. Patients with a higher stroke risk are more likely to receive anticoagulation therapy with VKA but are underdosed compared with the global average in the GARFIELD-AF. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION-URL: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT01090362

Development of periapical lesions in endodontically treated teeth with and without periodontal involvement: A retrospective cohort study

Introduction: The purpose of this study was to investigate the incidence of apical periodontitis (AP) in endodontically treated teeth with and without periodontal involvement. Methods: The records of 602 patients with 775 root canal–treated teeth were initially examined. Only teeth with adequate root canal filling, adequate coronal restoration, and no AP (periapical index = 1) were selected for further investigation. A total of 194 teeth were included in this cohort study. Age, sex, history of diabetes mellitus, smoking, hypertension, and immunodeficiency disorders were recorded. Two groups were made according to the periodontal status of the patients. The control group included periodontally healthy patients and the periodontal group patients with periodontal disease receiving nonsurgical periodontal treatment. After an observation period of at least 2 years, the incidence of AP was scored using the periapical index. The relationship between patients' variables and AP was conducted using the Cohen kappa test, the chi-square test, odds ratio (OR), and logistic regression analysis. Results: Newly emerged AP was found in 14% of periodontally involved teeth and in 3% of nonperiodontal involved teeth (P <.05, OR = 5.19, 95% confidence interval). The periodontal condition and hypertension were the only significant factors associated with the presence of AP in the follow-up after univariate logistic regression. Adjusting for hypertension, multivariate logistic regressions showed that periodontal status remained significant (OR = 5.25, 95% CI, P <.05). Conclusions: The risk of developing AP in endodontically treated teeth is 5.19 times higher for patients with periodontal disease compared with patients without periodontal disease

High-precision multi-photon ionization of accelerated laser-ablated species

We demonstrate that the pulsed-time structure and high-peak ion intensity provided by the laser-ablation process can be directly combined with the high resolution, high efficiency, and low background offered by collinear resonance ionization spectroscopy. This simple, versatile, and powerful method offers new and unique opportunities for high-precision studies of atomic and molecular structures, impacting fundamental and applied physics research. We show that even for ion beams possessing a relatively large energy spread, high-resolution hyperfine-structure measurements can be achieved by correcting the observed line shapes with the time-of-flight information of the resonantly ionized ions. This approach offers exceptional advantages for performing precision measurements on beams with large energy spreads and allows measurements of atomic parameters of previously inaccessible electronic states. The potential of this experimental method in multidisciplinary research is illustrated by performing, for the first time, hyperfine-structure measurements of selected states in the naturally occurring isotopes of indium, ^{113,115}In. Ab initio atomic-physics calculations have been performed to highlight the importance of our findings in the development of state-of-the-art atomic many-body methods, nuclear structure, and fundamental-physics studies

Data from: You are where you live: parasitic nematode mitochondrial genome size is associated with the thermal environment generated by hosts

There exists remarkable interspecific variation in mitochondrial sequence evolution rates and in mitochondrial genome sizes. A number of hypotheses based on the forces of mutation and selection have been proposed to explain this variation. Among such hypotheses, we test three: 1) the ‘longevity-dependent selection’, 2) the ‘functional constraints’ and 3) the ‘race for replication’ hypotheses, using published mtDNA genomic sequences of 47 Nematoda species. We did not find any relationship between body size (used as a proxy for longevity) and genome size or the substitution rate of protein sequences, providing little evidence for the first hypothesis. Parasitic species from different thermal habitats, as determined by their definitive host type (ectothermal vs. endothermal), did not differ in their rates of protein evolution. Therefore, little support was obtained for the second hypothesis. However, we revealed that mitogenomes of parasites of endotherms were significantly smaller than those of parasites of ectotherms, supporting the race for replication hypothesis. As mitochondrial genomes of endothermal animals are usually more compact than those of ectothermal animals, intriguingly, nematode parasites of endotherms and ectotherms exhibit similar patterns of mtDNA length variation to their hosts

Probing the 31Ga_{31}\mathrm{Ga} ground-state properties in the region near Z=28Z=28 with high-resolution laser spectroscopy

International audienceMagnetic-dipole and electric-quadrupole moments for $^{65,67,69,75,79–82}\mathrm{Ga}$ are reported using the Collinear Resonance Ionization Spectroscopy (CRIS) technique at the ISOLDE facility, CERN. The moments of $^{65}\mathrm{Ga}$ have been measured for the first time: $\mu =+1.775(3)\mu_N$ and $Q_s=+21.0(15)e\mathrm{fm}2$. These results are compared to shell-model calculations using the GXPF1 and JUN45 interactions and the trends of the moments approaching the region of the doubly magic $^{56}\mathrm{Ni}$ are discussed. Additionally, new values for the change in mean-square charge radii for $^{65}\mathrm{Ga}$ and $^{67}\mathrm{Ga}$ allow investigation into the odd-even staggering in the region below $N=40$

Precision measurements of the charge radii of potassium isotopes

International audiencePrecision nuclear charge radii measurements in the light-mass region are essential for understanding the evolution of nuclear structure, but their measurement represents a great challenge for experimental techniques. At the Collinear Resonance Ionization Spectroscopy (CRIS) setup at ISOLDE-CERN, a laser frequency calibration and monitoring system was installed and commissioned through the hyperfine spectra measurement of $^{38–47}$K. It allowed for the extraction of the hyperfine parameters and isotope shifts with better than 1 MHz precision. These results are in excellent agreement with available literature values and they demonstrate the suitability of the CRIS technique for the study of nuclear observables in light atomic systems. In addition, the spectral line shapes obtained under different conditions were systematically investigated, highlighting the importance of finding optimal conditions, under which the extracted nuclear properties remain unaffected by laser-atom interactions