Simultaneous rota-stenting and transcatheter aortic valve implantation for patients with heavily calcified coronary stenosis and aortic stenosis

AbstractGiven that coronary artery disease (CAD) in octogenarians undergoing transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) often presents with more complex lesions and extensive calcification, rotational atherectomy (RA) may be needed in some cases before stenting. However, data regarding the feasibility and safety of simultaneous RA during TAVI using the Medtronic CoreValve (MCV; Medtronic, Minneapolis, MN, USA) system are lacking. Three out of 107 (2.8%) patients (2 females, average age 85.6 years, mean aortic valve area 0.5 cm2, mean left ventricular ejection fraction 39%, mean Logistic EuroScore 70%), with complex, heavily calcified coronary stenosis, and severe valvular aortic stenosis (AS) were treated with TAVI and RA due to high surgical risk. After balloon valvuloplasty, all coronary lesions were successfully treated with RA and stenting, immediately followed by transfemoral TAVI with a self-expandable MCV. Our data suggested that in the very elderly patients with severe and heavily calcified CAD and AS who were turned down for cardiac surgery, RA and stenting followed by TAVI may be performed successfully in a combined, single-stage procedure

The Effect of Financial Resources on Fertility: Evidence from Administrative Data on Lottery Winners

This paper utilizes wealth shocks from winning lottery prizes to examine the effect of financial resources on fertility. Using administrative data on Taiwanese lottery winners and a difference-in-differences design, we compare the trend in fertility between households receiving lottery prizes of more than 1 million NT$(33,000 US$) with those winning less than 10,000 NT$(330 US$). The results show that the receipt of a big lottery prize significantly increases fertility, and effects are driven by households with less financial resources. Moreover, big lottery wins mainly trigger childless households to have children and induce people to get married earlier

THE BALANCE EFFECT OF REARFOOT WEDGES WITH DIFFERENT HEIGHT FOR COLLEGIATE STUDENTS WITH CHRONIC ANKLE INSTABILITY: PILOT STUDY

Chronic ankle instability (CAI) is caused by recurrent lateral ankle sprain. Foot orthotic is one option of treatment. The purpose of this study was to determinate the balance effect of rearfoot wedges with different height in collegiate students with chronic ankle instability. Eight collegiate students with CAI subjects were voluntarily particapated in this study. The area of center of pressure was used as balance variable of outcome measurement. Seven height of rearfoot wedge was used to test, included 0°, 2°, 4°, 6° of medial wedge and 2°, 4°, 6° of lateral wedge. One-way ANOVA was used to analyze the difference among sevent height of wedge intervention in CAI group. The results were showed no significantly difference among seven height of wedge intervention. However, we found a trend of balance improvement with the wedge intervention, especially in 4 degrees of medial wedge intervention

Simple and robust downstream purification process for cell-derived influenza vaccines

New emerging influenza viruses with pandemic potentials were occurred in recent years, e.g. H5N1 in 1997, H1N1 in 2009, and H7N9 in 2013. The demand of producing pandemic influenza vaccines for human use with quick supply is high. For the cell-based pandemic influenza vaccines, we proposed a flow-through chromatography purification process. This process has only involved few purification steps and is easy to operate. Vero- and MDCK- cell derived avian influenza viruses including H5N1 and H7N9 were purified efficiently by the process proposed. The presented purification process consisted of clarification, inactivation, concentration, anion exchange chromatography (Capto Q), size exclusion and adsorption chromatography (Capto Core 700), diafiltration and sterile filtration. In the chromatography steps, cell DNA and protein were removed remarkably, and the virus were flowed through these columns. The flow rate was set as fast as 250 cm/min. The loading volume of virus solution was up to 50 times of column volume (CV).The DNA was removed over 90% after using Capto Q column, and was further removed by Capto Core 700 column. The overall removal rate of cellular DNA was more than 99%. The HA recovery rates of H5N1 and H7N9 influenza virus from Vero and MDCK cells were 20 to 40%. The DNA concentration of all purified bulks met the regulatory requirement of 10ng per dose. The developed purification process is simple and efficient, and it is suitable for purification of various influenza virus strains and can be used for the pandemic influenza vaccine production

Nocturnal CPAP improves walking capacity in COPD patients with obstructive sleep apnoea

BACKGROUND: Exercise limitation is an important issue in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and it often co-exists with obstructive sleep apnoea (overlap syndrome). This study examined the effects of nocturnal continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) treatment on walking capacity in COPD patients with or without obstructive sleep apnoea. METHODS: Forty-four stable moderate-to-severe COPD patients were recruited and completed this study. They all underwent polysomnography, CPAP titration, accommodation, and treatment with adequate pressure. The incremental shuttle walking test was used to measure walking capacity at baseline and after two nights of CPAP treatment. Urinary catecholamine and heart rate variability were measured before and after CPAP treatment. RESULTS: After two nights of CPAP treatment, the apnoea-hypopnoea index and oxygen desaturation index significantly improved in both overlap syndrome and COPD patients, however these changes were significantly greater in the overlap syndrome than in the COPD group. Sleep architecture and autonomic dysfunction significantly improved in the overlap syndrome group but not in the COPD group. CPAP treatment was associated with an increased walking capacity from baseline from 226.4 ± 95.3 m to 288.6 ± 94.6 m (P < 0.05), and decreased urinary catecholamine levels, pre-exercise heart rate, oxygenation, and Borg scale in the overlap syndrome group. An improvement in the apnoea-hypopnoea index was an independent factor associated with the increase in walking distance (r = 0.564). CONCLUSION: Nocturnal CPAP may improve walking capacity in COPD patients with overlap syndrome. TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT0091426

A New Parallel Domain-Decomposed Chebyshev Collocation Method for Atmospheric and Oceanic Modeling

Spectral methods seek the solution to a differential equation in terms of series of known smooth function. The Chebyshev series possesses the exponential-convergence property regardless of the imposed boundary condition, and therefore is suited for the regional modeling. We propose a new domain-decomposed Chebyshev collocation method which facilitates an efficient parallel implementation. The boundary conditions for the individual sub-domains are exchanged through one grid interval overlapping. This approach is validated using the one dimensional advection equation and the inviscid Burgers¡¦ equation. We further tested the vortex formation and propagation problems using two-dimensional nonlinear shallow water equations. The domain decomposition approach in general gave more accurate solutions compared to that of the single domain calculation. Moreover, our approach retains the exponential error convergence and conservation of mass and the quadratic quantities such as kinetic energy and enstrophy. The efficiency of our method is greater than one and increases with the number of processors, with the optimal speed up of 29 and efficiency 3.7 in 8 processors. Efficiency greater than one was obtained due to the reduction the degrees of freedom in each sub-domain that reduces the spectral operational count and also due to a larger time step allowed in the sub-domain method. The communication overhead begins to dominate when the number of processors further increases, but the method still results in an efficiency of 0.9 in 16 processors. As a result, the parallel domain-decomposition Chebyshev method may serve as an efficient alternative for atmospheric and oceanic modeling

Toona sinensis

Toona sinensis leaf (TSL) is commonly used as a vegetable and in spice in Asia. In this study, feeding with aqueous extract of TSL (TSL-A) alleviated oxidative stress and recovered the motility and functions of sperm in rats under oxidative stress. Protein expressions in testes identified by proteomic analysis and verified by Western blot demonstrated that TSL-A not only downregulated the level of glutathione transferase mu6 (antioxidant system), heat shock protein 90 kDa-β (protein misfolding repairing system), cofilin 2 (spermatogenesis), and cyclophilin A (apoptosis) but also upregulated crease3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-coenzyme A synthase 2 (steroidogenesis), heat shock glycoprotein 96, and pancreatic trypsin 1 (sperm-oocyte interaction). These results indicate that TSL-A promotes the functions of sperm and testes via regulating multiple testicular proteins in rats under oxidative stress, suggesting that TSL-A is a valuable functional food supplement to improve functions of sperm and testes for males under oxidative stress

Differential evolutionary conservation of motif modes in the yeast protein interaction network

BACKGROUND: The importance of a network motif (a recurring interconnected pattern of special topology which is over-represented in a biological network) lies in its position in the hierarchy between the protein molecule and the module in a protein-protein interaction network. Until now, however, the methods available have greatly restricted the scope of research. While they have focused on the analysis in the resolution of a motif topology, they have not been able to distinguish particular motifs of the same topology in a protein-protein interaction network. RESULTS: We have been able to assign the molecular function annotations of Gene Ontology to each protein in the protein-protein interactions of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. For various motif topologies, we have developed an algorithm, enabling us to unveil one million "motif modes", each of which features a unique topological combination of molecular functions. To our surprise, the conservation ratio, i.e., the extent of the evolutionary constraints upon the motif modes of the same motif topology, varies significantly, clearly indicative of distinct differences in the evolutionary constraints upon motifs of the same motif topology. Equally important, for all motif modes, we have found a power-law distribution of the motif counts on each motif mode. We postulate that motif modes may very well represent the evolutionary-conserved topological units of a protein interaction network. CONCLUSION: For the first time, the motifs of a protein interaction network have been investigated beyond the scope of motif topology. The motif modes determined in this study have not only enabled us to differentiate among different evolutionary constraints on motifs of the same topology but have also opened up new avenues through which protein interaction networks can be analyzed