722 research outputs found
Vascular complications of sickle cell disease
Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a monogenetic disorder caused by a mutation in the [H9252]-globin gene HBB leading to polymerization of red blood cells causing damage to cell membranes, increasing its rigidity and intravascular hemolysis. Multiple lines of evidence suggest that SCD can be viewed as pan-vasculopathy associated with multiple mechanisms but driven by hemoglobin S polymerization. Here we review the pathophysiology, clinical manifestations and management strategies for cerebrovascular disease, pulmonary hypertension and renal disease associated with SCD. These “vascular phenotypes” reflect the systemic nature of the complications of SCD and are a major threat to the well-being of patients with the disorder
Patients' perspectives and preferences in the choice of inhalers: the case for Respimat® or HandiHaler®
Poor inhaler technique hampers the efficacy of drug therapy in asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Not only does this affect individual patient care, but it also impacts on the wider health care economics associated with these conditions. Treatment guidelines recommend a systematic approach to drug class selection; however, standardization of inhaler selection is currently difficult owing to the complexity of the interaction between the inhaler device and the patient. Specifically, individual patient preference can influence how successful a treatment is overall. This article reviews inhaler devices from the patient perspective, with a particular focus on the dry powder inhaler HandiHaler® and Respimat® Soft Mist™ Inhaler. It discusses factors that influence device preference and treatment compliance and reviews tools that can aid health care professionals to better match inhaler devices to individual patients’ needs
193 MOLECULAR CONTROL OF ARCTICULAR CARTILAGE DEGENERATION BY TRANSFORMING GROWTH FACTOR ALPHA
Charged gravastars admitting conformal motion
We propose a new model of a {\it gravastar} admitting conformal motion. While
retaining the framework of the Mazur-Mottola model, the gravastar is assumed to
be internally charged, with an exterior defined by a Reissner-Nordstr{\"o}m
rather than a Schwarzschild line element. The solutions obtained involve (i)
the interior region, (ii) the shell, and (iii) the exterior region of the
sphere. Of these three cases the first case is of primary interest since the
total gravitational mass vanishes for vanishing charge and turns the total
gravitational mass into an {\it electromagnetic mass} under certain conditions.
This suggests that the interior de Sitter vacuum of a charged gravastar is
essentially an electromagnetic mass model that must generate the gravitational
mass. We have also analyzed various other aspects such as the stress energy
tensor in the thin shell and the entropy of the system.Comment: Minor addition, Accepted in Phys. Lett.
Solving the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation with absorbing boundary conditions and source terms in Mathematica 6.0
In recent decades a lot of research has been done on the numerical solution
of the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation. On the one hand, some of the
proposed numerical methods do not need any kind of matrix inversion, but source
terms cannot be easily implemented into this schemes; on the other, some
methods involving matrix inversion can implement source terms in a natural way,
but are not easy to implement into some computational software programs widely
used by non-experts in programming (e.g. Mathematica). We present a simple
method to solve the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation by using a standard
Crank-Nicholson method together with a Cayley's form for the finite-difference
representation of evolution operator. Here, such standard numerical scheme has
been simplified by inverting analytically the matrix of the evolution operator
in position representation. The analytical inversion of the N x N matrix let us
easily and fully implement the numerical method, with or without source terms,
into Mathematica or even into any numerical computing language or computational
software used for scientific computing.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figure
When biology meets behaviour:can medication adherence mask the contribution of pharmacogenetic effects in asthma?
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