Insomnia as an Independent Predictor of Incident Cardiovascular Disease in HIV: Data from the Veterans Aging Cohort Study

Background: Insomnia is associated with increased cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk in the general population and is highly prevalent in people with HIV. The CVD risk conferred by insomnia in the HIV population is unknown. Methods: Using the Veterans Aging Cohort Study-Survey Cohort, insomnia symptoms were measured and dummy coded with the item, “Difficulty falling or staying asleep?” (5-point scale from no difficulty to bothers a lot). Incident CVD event ICD-9 codes (acute myocardial infarction, stroke, or coronary artery revascularization) were identified with VA and Medicare administrative data and VA fee-for-service data. Those with baseline CVD were excluded. Results: HIV-infected (N=3,108) veterans had a median follow-up time of 10.8 years, during which 267 CVD events occurred. Compared to HIV-infected veterans with no difficulty falling or staying asleep, HIV-infected veterans bothered a lot by insomnia symptoms had an increased risk of incident CVD after adjusting for demographics (HR=1.64, 95%CI=1.16-2.31, p=.005), CVD risk factors (HR=1.62, 95%CI=1.14-2.30, p=.007), additional potential confounders (hepatitis C infection, renal disease, anemia, alcohol use, cocaine use; HR=1.70, 95%CI=1.19-2.43, p=.003), and HIV-specific factors (HIV-1 RNA, CD4+ T-cell count, ART; HR=1.66, 95%CI=1.16-2.37, p=.005). Additional adjustment for non-benzodiazepine sleep medication (HR=1.62, 95%CI=1.13-2.32, p=.009) did not attenuate the association; however, it fell short of significance at p < .01 after adjustment for depressive symptoms (HR=1.51, 95%CI=0.98-2.32, p=.060) or antidepressant medication (HR=1.51, 95%CI=1.04-2.19, p=.031). Conclusion: Highly bothersome insomnia symptoms were significantly associated with incident CVD in HIV-infected veterans, suggesting that insomnia may be a novel, modifiable risk factor for CVD in HIV

Factors Associated with Sleep Duration in Korean Adults: Results of a 2008 Community Health Survey in Gwangju Metropolitan City, Korea

Short (≤ 6 hr) and long (≥ 9 hr) sleep durations are both associated with risk factors for cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, depression, learning problems, accidents and excess mortality. However, little is known about factors associated with sleep duration in Korean adults. This study examined sleep patterns in Korean adults and identified factors associated with short and long sleep durations. This study analyzed cross-sectional data collected from 4,411 Korean adults aged 19 yr and older who participated in a community health survey conducted in Gwangju, Korea. Multinomial logistic regression analysis was used to identify associations between socio-demographic and health-related factors and short or long sleep durations. Of the population, 37.2% and 4.0% reported short and long sleep, respectively. Short sleep was associated with older age, lower levels of income, night or shift work, heavy smoking, and depression or anxiety; long sleep was associated with younger age, being divorced or widowed, heavy smoking, underweight, depression or anxiety, and poorer self-reported health. In conclusion, a relatively high prevalence of short sleep duration is identified in this population of Korean adults. Factors associated with short or long sleep may act as potential confounders of the relationship between sleep duration and health outcomes

Numerical study of nonlinear heat transfer from a wavy surface to a high permeability medium with pseudo-spectral and smoothed particle methods

Motivated by petro-chemical geological systems, we consider the natural convection boundary layer flow from a vertical isothermal wavy surface adjacent to a saturated non-Darcian high permeability porous medium. High permeability is considered to represent geologically sparsely packed porous media. Both Darcian drag and Forchheimer inertial drag terms are included in the velocity boundary layer equation. A high permeability medium is considered. We employ a sinusoidal relation for the wavy surface. Using a set of transformations, the momentum and heat conservation equations are converted from an (x, y) coordinate system to an (x,η) dimensionless system. The two-point boundary value problem is then solved numerically with a pseudo-spectral method based on combining the Bellman–Kalaba quasi linearization method with the Chebyschev spectral collocation technique (SQLM). The SQLM computations are demonstrated to achieve excellent correlation with smoothed particle hydrodynamic (SPH) Lagrangian solutions. We study the effect of Darcy number (Da), Forchheimer number (Fs), amplitude wavelength (A) and Prandtl number (Pr) on the velocity and temperature distributions in the regime. Local Nusselt number is also computed for selected cases. The study finds important applications in petroleum engineering and also energy systems exploiting porous media and undulating (wavy) surface geometry. The SQLM algorithm is shown to be exceptionally robust and achieves fast convergence and excellent accuracy in nonlinear heat transfer simulations

Supersymmetry on the lattice

Lattice results in supersymmetry are summarized. Past, present and future perspectives are discussed.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, Plenary Talk at Lattice 2002(plenary), MIT, USA. Typos correcte

Depression and HIV Infection are Risk Factors for Incident Heart Failure Among Veterans: Veterans Aging Cohort Study.

Background: Both HIV and depression are associated with increased heart failure (HF) risk. Depression, a common comorbidity, may further increase the risk of HF among HIV+ adults. We assessed the association between HIV, depression and incident HF. Methods and Results: Veterans Aging Cohort Study (VACS) participants free from cardiovascular disease at baseline (N = 81,427; 26,908 HIV+, 54,51

Super Yang-Mills on the lattice with domain wall fermions

The dynamical N=1, SU(2) Super Yang-Mills theory is studied on the lattice using a new lattice fermion regulator, domain wall fermions. This formulation even at non-zero lattice spacing does not require fine-tuning, has improved chiral properties and can produce topological zero-mode phenomena. Numerical simulations of the full theory on lattices with the topology of a torus indicate the formation of a gluino condensate which is sustained at the chiral limit. The condensate is non-zero even for small volume and small supersymmetry breaking mass where zero mode effects due to gauge fields with fractional topological charge appear to play a role.Comment: LaTeX, 35 pages, 11 eps figures. A few changes in sec. 5.3, figure 11 added. To appear in Phys. Rev.

Results from the PARADIGM registry

Funding Information: This work was supported by the Korea Medical Device Development Fund grant funded by the Korean government (Ministry of Science and ICT; Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy; Ministry of Health & Welfare, Republic of Korea; and Ministry of Food and Drug Safety; Project Number: 202016B02) and funded in part by a generous gift from the Dalio Institute of Cardiovascular Imaging and the Michael Wolk Foundation. This work was also supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea [RS‐2022‐00165404, 2022R1A5A6000840, 2020R1I1A1A01073151]. The funder of the study had no role in study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, or writing of the report. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Authors. Clinical Cardiology published by Wiley Periodicals, LLC.Background and Hypothesis: The recently introduced Bayesian quantile regression (BQR) machine-learning method enables comprehensive analyzing the relationship among complex clinical variables. We analyzed the relationship between multiple cardiovascular (CV) risk factors and different stages of coronary artery disease (CAD) using the BQR model in a vessel-specific manner. Methods: From the data of 1,463 patients obtained from the PARADIGM (NCT02803411) registry, we analyzed the lumen diameter stenosis (DS) of the three vessels: left anterior descending (LAD), left circumflex (LCx), and right coronary artery (RCA). Two models for predicting DS and DS changes were developed. Baseline CV risk factors, symptoms, and laboratory test results were used as the inputs. The conditional 10%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 90% quantile functions of the maximum DS and DS change of the three vessels were estimated using the BQR model. Results: The 90th percentiles of the DS of the three vessels and their maximum DS change were 41%–50% and 5.6%–7.3%, respectively. Typical anginal symptoms were associated with the highest quantile (90%) of DS in the LAD; diabetes with higher quantiles (75% and 90%) of DS in the LCx; dyslipidemia with the highest quantile (90%) of DS in the RCA; and shortness of breath showed some association with the LCx and RCA. Interestingly, High-density lipoprotein cholesterol showed a dynamic association along DS change in the per-patient analysis. Conclusions: This study demonstrates the clinical utility of the BQR model for evaluating the comprehensive relationship between risk factors and baseline-grade CAD and its progression.publishersversionepub_ahead_of_prin

Intra aortic balloon pump: literature review of risk factors related to complications of the intraaortic balloon pump

The increasing use of the intra aortic balloon pump is attributed to the relatively easy percutaneous insertion and the low threshold of use over the past few years, especially in elderly patients with multi-vessel diseases and an affected ejection fraction

Fluorinated Carbohydrates as Lectin Ligands: Biorelevant Sensors with Capacity to Monitor Anomer Affinity in 19F-NMR-Based Inhibitor Screening

11 páginas, 4 figurasd, 2 esquemas -- PAGS nros. 4354-4364Our recent description of pulse sequences for the intramolecular relay of 1H polarization to the 19F reporter of a carbohydrate ligand after saturation transfer from a cognate lectin prompted us to test the applicability of this technique for inhibitor screening. By strategically combining synthetic organic chemistry and cell assays with 19F-NMR-based competition experiments, we document the validity of this approach. Two mannose-specific leguminous agglutinins as receptors, the α-methyl derivative of 2-deoxy-2-fluoro-D-mannopyranoside as sensor and synthetic mannosides selected to represent different inhibitory capacities were used to establish a test panel. Signal amplitudes were found to vary among the two related lectins, and their precipitation by glycodendrimers enabled inherent limits to be set. The obtained experimental basis was then broadened by assaying a galactopyranoside-binding plant toxin, using 6-deoxy-6-fluoro-D-galactopyranose as a sensor molecule. The easy identification of the two anomeric signals by 19F NMR spectroscopy enabled ready detection of the preference of this lectin for the α-anomer and allowed the two individual inhibition profiles to be deduced. These 19F NMR spectroscopic data were in accord with the activities of inhibitors used to protect cells from toxicity. Our results therefore provide an experimental basis for 19F-NMR-based inhibitor screeningThis work was generously supported by the European Community (Marie Curie Research training grant MCRTN-CT-2005–19561), the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICINN) (grant numbers CTQ2009-08536 and BFU2009-10052), and the Spanish Institute of Health Carlos III (ISCIII), under the initiative CIBER of Respiratory Diseases (CIBERES). The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement number 260600 (“GlycoHIT”)Peer reviewe

Ecological distribution conflicts and the vocabulary of environmental justice

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552There is a fundamental clash between economy and the environment due to the growing social metabolism of industrial economies. Energy cannot be recycled. Therefore, the energy from the fossil fuels is used only once, and new supplies of coal, oil, and gas must be obtained from the "commodity extraction frontiers". Similarly, materials are recycled only in part, and therefore, even an economy that would not grow would need fresh supplies of iron ore, bauxite, copper, and paper pulp. The industrial economy is entropic. Meanwhile, permanent "funds" such as aquifers, forests, and fisheries are overexploited, the fertility of the soil is jeopardized and biodiversity is depleted. Thus, the changing social metabolism of industrial economies (including waste disposal such as the excessive production of carbon dioxide) gives rise to growing numbers of ecological distribution conflicts that sometimes overlap with other social conflicts on class, ethnicity or indigenous identity, gender, caste, or territorial rights. The term Ecological Distribution Conflicts (EDC) was coined to describe social conflicts born from the unfair access to natural resources and the unjust burdens of pollution. Such conflicts give birth to movements of resistance, to the point that we can speak already of a global movement for Environmental Justice