The Pioneer Anomaly

Radio-metric Doppler tracking data received from the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft from heliocentric distances of 20-70 AU has consistently indicated the presence of a small, anomalous, blue-shifted frequency drift uniformly changing with a rate of ~6 x 10^{-9} Hz/s. Ultimately, the drift was interpreted as a constant sunward deceleration of each particular spacecraft at the level of a_P = (8.74 +/- 1.33) x 10^{-10} m/s^2. This apparent violation of the Newton's gravitational inverse-square law has become known as the Pioneer anomaly; the nature of this anomaly remains unexplained. In this review, we summarize the current knowledge of the physical properties of the anomaly and the conditions that led to its detection and characterization. We review various mechanisms proposed to explain the anomaly and discuss the current state of efforts to determine its nature. A comprehensive new investigation of the anomalous behavior of the two Pioneers has begun recently. The new efforts rely on the much-extended set of radio-metric Doppler data for both spacecraft in conjunction with the newly available complete record of their telemetry files and a large archive of original project documentation. As the new study is yet to report its findings, this review provides the necessary background for the new results to appear in the near future. In particular, we provide a significant amount of information on the design, operations and behavior of the two Pioneers during their entire missions, including descriptions of various data formats and techniques used for their navigation and radio-science data analysis. As most of this information was recovered relatively recently, it was not used in the previous studies of the Pioneer anomaly, but it is critical for the new investigation.Comment: 165 pages, 40 figures, 16 tables; accepted for publication in Living Reviews in Relativit

Brain dysconnectivity with heart failure

Structural brain damage associated with heart failure is well described, however, little is known about associated changes in various specific brain functions that bear immediate clinical relevance. A satisfactory pathophysiological link between heart failure and decline in cognitive function is still missing. In the present study, we aim to detect functional correlates of heart failure in terms of alterations in functional brain connectivity (quantified by functional magnetic resonance imaging) related to cognitive performance assessed by neuropsychological testing.Eighty patients were post-hoc grouped into subjects with and without coronary artery disease. The coronary artery disease patients were further grouped as presenting with or without heart failure according to the guidelines of the European Society of Cardiology. On the basis of resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging, brain connectivity was investigated using network centrality as well as seed-based correlation. Statistical analysis aimed at specifying centrality group differences and potential correlations between centrality and heart failure related measures including left ventricular ejection fraction and serum concentrations of N-terminal fragment of brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP). The resulting correlation maps were then analyzed using a flexible factorial model with the factors “heart failure” and “cognitive performance”. Our core findings are: (1) A statistically significant network centrality decrease was found to be associated with heart failure primarily in the precuneus, i.e., we show a positive correlation between centrality and left ventricular ejection fraction as well as a negative correlation between centrality and NT-proBNP. (2) Seed-based correlation analysis showed a significant interaction between heart failure and cognitive performance related to a significant decrease of precuneus connectivity to other brain regions. We obtained converging results by different analysis approaches indicating the robustness of the findings we report here.Our results suggest that the precuneus is a brain region involved in connectivity decline in patients with heart failure, possibly primarily or already at an early stage. Current models of Alzheimer’s Disease – having pathophysiological risk factors in common with cerebrovascular disorders – also consider reduced precuneus connectivity as a marker of brain degeneration. Consequently, we propose that heart failure and Alzheimer’s Disease exhibit partly overlapping pathophysiological paths or have common endpoints associated with a more or less severe decrease in brain connectivity. This is further supported by specific functional connectivity alterations between the precuneus and widely distributed cortical regions, particularly in patients showing reduced cognitive performance

Alteration of Multiple Leukocyte Gene Expression Networks is Linked with Magnetic Resonance Markers of Prognosis After Acute ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction

Prognostic relevant pathways of leukocyte involvement in human myocardial ischemic-reperfusion injury are largely unknown. We enrolled 136 patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) after primary angioplasty within 12 h after onset of symptoms. Following reperfusion, whole blood was collected within a median time interval of 20 h (interquartile range: 15-25 h) for genome-wide gene expression analysis. Subsequent CMR scans were performed using a standard protocol to determine infarct size (IS), area at risk (AAR), myocardial salvage index (MSI) and the extent of late microvascular obstruction (lateMO). We found 398 genes associated with lateMO and two genes with IS. Neither AAR, nor MSI showed significant correlations with gene expression. Genes correlating with lateMO were strongly related to several canonical pathways, including positive regulation of T-cell activation (p = 3.44 x 10(-5)), and regulation of inflammatory response (p = 1.86 x 10(-3)). Network analysis of multiple gene expression alterations associated with larger lateMO identified the following functional consequences: facilitated utilisation and decreased concentration of free fatty acid, repressed cell differentiation, enhanced phagocyte movement, increased cell death, vascular disease and compensatory vasculogenesis. In conclusion, the extent of lateMO after acute, reperfused STEMI correlated with altered activation of multiple genes related to fatty acid utilisation, lymphocyte differentiation, phagocyte mobilisation, cell survival, and vascular dysfunction

Subsequent Event Risk in Individuals with Established Coronary Heart Disease:Design and Rationale of the GENIUS-CHD Consortium

BACKGROUND: The "GENetIcs of sUbSequent Coronary Heart Disease" (GENIUS-CHD) consortium was established to facilitate discovery and validation of genetic variants and biomarkers for risk of subsequent CHD events, in individuals with established CHD. METHODS: The consortium currently includes 57 studies from 18 countries, recruiting 185,614 participants with either acute coronary syndrome, stable CHD or a mixture of both at baseline. All studies collected biological samples and followed-up study participants prospectively for subsequent events. RESULTS: Enrollment into the individual studies took place between 1985 to present day with duration of follow up ranging from 9 months to 15 years. Within each study, participants with CHD are predominantly of self-reported European descent (38%-100%), mostly male (44%-91%) with mean ages at recruitment ranging from 40 to 75 years. Initial feasibility analyses, using a federated analysis approach, yielded expected associations between age (HR 1.15 95% CI 1.14-1.16) per 5-year increase, male sex (HR 1.17, 95% CI 1.13-1.21) and smoking (HR 1.43, 95% CI 1.35-1.51) with risk of subsequent CHD death or myocardial infarction, and differing associations with other individual and composite cardiovascular endpoints. CONCLUSIONS: GENIUS-CHD is a global collaboration seeking to elucidate genetic and non-genetic determinants of subsequent event risk in individuals with established CHD, in order to improve residual risk prediction and identify novel drug targets for secondary prevention. Initial analyses demonstrate the feasibility and reliability of a federated analysis approach. The consortium now plans to initiate and test novel hypotheses as well as supporting replication and validation analyses for other investigators

The effects of transurethral resection and cystoprostatectomy on dissemination of epithelial cells in the circulation of patients with bladder cancer

This study was undertaken to evaluate the risk of haematogenous dissemination of epithelial cells induced by endoscopic resection and/or cystoprostatectomy for transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder. Thirty-three patients were studied. Thirty-one had different stages and grades of bladder cancer and two patients had benign bladder conditions. Twenty-five cancer patients required transurethral resection of their bladder tumour. Of those, 20 had superficial disease (pTaG1–G2: n = 19; pT1G2: n = 1) and five had muscle invasive tumours (pT2G3: n = 2; pT3aG3: n = 1; pT4G3: n = 2). Five patients underwent radical cystoprostatectomy for muscle invasive cancers (pT2G3: n = 3; pT3bG3: n = 1; pT4G3: n = 1) and one man received chemotherapy for metastatic disease. Venous blood (10 ml) was obtained from the antecubital fossa in each patient, before and 1–2 h after completion of surgery, and prior to treatment in the metastatic patient. An indirect immunocytochemical technique was used to detect circulating epithelial cells after centrifugation on Ficoll gradient and fixation of mononuclear cells on slides, using a monoclonal antibody directed against three cytokeratins: CK8, CK18 and CK19. Circulating epithelial cells were detected only in the patient with metastatic disease. None of the other patients had evidence of epithelial circulating cells before or after surgery. The results suggest that irrespective of disease stage and grade, neither endoscopic nor open bladder surgery leads to detectable dissemination of urothelial cells in the peripheral circulation. These procedures are therefore unlikely to increase the risk of progression and metastasis in transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder. © 1999 Cancer Research Campaig

Association of Chromosome 9p21 with Subsequent Coronary Heart Disease events:A GENIUS-CHD study of individual participant data

BACKGROUND:Genetic variation at chromosome 9p21 is a recognized risk factor for coronary heart disease (CHD). However, its effect on disease progression and subsequent events is unclear, raising questions about its value for stratification of residual risk. METHODS:A variant at chromosome 9p21 (rs1333049) was tested for association with subsequent events during follow-up in 103,357 Europeans with established CHD at baseline from the GENIUS-CHD Consortium (73.1% male, mean age 62.9 years). The primary outcome, subsequent CHD death or myocardial infarction (CHD death/MI), occurred in 13,040 of the 93,115 participants with available outcome data. Effect estimates were compared to case/control risk obtained from CARDIoGRAMPlusC4D including 47,222 CHD cases and 122,264 controls free of CHD. RESULTS:Meta-analyses revealed no significant association between chromosome 9p21 and the primary outcome of CHD death/MI among those with established CHD at baseline (GENIUS-CHD OR 1.02; 95% CI 0.99-1.05). This contrasted with a strong association in CARDIoGRAMPlusC4D OR 1.20; 95% CI 1.18-1.22; p for interaction Conclusions: In contrast to studies comparing individuals with CHD to disease free controls, we found no clear association between genetic variation at chromosome 9p21 and risk of subsequent acute CHD events when all individuals had CHD at baseline. However, the association with subsequent revascularization may support the postulated mechanism of chromosome 9p21 for promoting atheroma development

Target genes, variants, tissues and transcriptional pathways influencing human serum urate levels.

Elevated serum urate levels cause gout and correlate with cardiometabolic diseases via poorly understood mechanisms. We performed a trans-ancestry genome-wide association study of serum urate in 457,690 individuals, identifying 183 loci (147 previously unknown) that improve the prediction of gout in an independent cohort of 334,880 individuals. Serum urate showed significant genetic correlations with many cardiometabolic traits, with genetic causality analyses supporting a substantial role for pleiotropy. Enrichment analysis, fine-mapping of urate-associated loci and colocalization with gene expression in 47 tissues implicated the kidney and liver as the main target organs and prioritized potentially causal genes and variants, including the transcriptional master regulators in the liver and kidney, HNF1A and HNF4A. Experimental validation showed that HNF4A transactivated the promoter of ABCG2, encoding a major urate transporter, in kidney cells, and that HNF4A p.Thr139Ile is a functional variant. Transcriptional coregulation within and across organs may be a general mechanism underlying the observed pleiotropy between urate and cardiometabolic traits.The Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) Project was supported by the Common Fund of the Office of the Director of the National Institutes of Health, and by NCI, NHGRI, NHLBI, NIDA, NIMH, and NINDS. Variant annotation was supported by software resources provided via the Caché Campus program of the InterSystems GmbH to Alexander Teumer

X-chromosome and kidney function:evidence from a multi-trait genetic analysis of 908,697 individuals reveals sex-specific and sex-differential findings in genes regulated by androgen response elements

X-chromosomal genetic variants are understudied but can yield valuable insights into sexually dimorphic human traits and diseases. We performed a sex-stratified cross-ancestry X-chromosome-wide association meta-analysis of seven kidney-related traits (n = 908,697), identifying 23 loci genome-wide significantly associated with two of the traits: 7 for uric acid and 16 for estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), including four novel eGFR loci containing the functionally plausible prioritized genes ACSL4, CLDN2, TSPAN6 and the female-specific DRP2. Further, we identified five novel sex-interactions, comprising male-specific effects at FAM9B and AR/EDA2R, and three sex-differential findings with larger genetic effect sizes in males at DCAF12L1 and MST4 and larger effect sizes in females at HPRT1. All prioritized genes in loci showing significant sex-interactions were located next to androgen response elements (ARE). Five ARE genes showed sex-differential expressions. This study contributes new insights into sex-dimorphisms of kidney traits along with new prioritized gene targets for further molecular research.</p

Genome-wide association meta-analyses and fine-mapping elucidate pathways influencing albuminuria

Abstract: Increased levels of the urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio (UACR) are associated with higher risk of kidney disease progression and cardiovascular events, but underlying mechanisms are incompletely understood. Here, we conduct trans-ethnic (n = 564,257) and European-ancestry specific meta-analyses of genome-wide association studies of UACR, including ancestry- and diabetes-specific analyses, and identify 68 UACR-associated loci. Genetic correlation analyses and risk score associations in an independent electronic medical records database (n = 192,868) reveal connections with proteinuria, hyperlipidemia, gout, and hypertension. Fine-mapping and trans-Omics analyses with gene expression in 47 tissues and plasma protein levels implicate genes potentially operating through differential expression in kidney (including TGFB1, MUC1, PRKCI, and OAF), and allow coupling of UACR associations to altered plasma OAF concentrations. Knockdown of OAF and PRKCI orthologs in Drosophila nephrocytes reduces albumin endocytosis. Silencing fly PRKCI further impairs slit diaphragm formation. These results generate a priority list of genes and pathways for translational research to reduce albuminuria