Familial hypercholesterolemia and COVID-19 : A menacing but treatable vasculopathic condition

Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The AuthorsSARS-CoV-2 infection continues to cause increased morbidity and mortality, and due to the slow pace of vaccination COVID-19 will probably remain a global burden to health systems for a long time. Unfortunately, the necessary prevention and treatment strategies of COVID-19 have led to restriction measures that are hampering the routine care of common chronic metabolic conditions like hypercholesterolemia. It is of particular concern that during the acute phase of COVID-19, the control of pre-existing metabolic diseases tends to get worse which again increases the risk for complications and a poor outcome in these patients. A significant contributor to these complications is endothelial dysfunction which is associated with COVID-19. This Commentary will discuss the impact of COVID-19 on endothelial function particularly in patients with familial hypercholesterolemia (FH), a metabolic inherited disease known to in itself adversely affect endothelial function. There should be no hesitation to continue with statin therapy in severe hypercholesterolemic patients with COVID-19. We argue that in FH patients with COVID-19 the clinicians need even consider intensifying statin therapy as well as the addition of other lipid-lowering agents, such as proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9(PCSK9) inhibitors. In contrast to statins, the PCSK9 inhibitors lower lipoprotein(a) [Lp(a)] level, and, accordingly, these latter drugs need to be considered particularly in FH patients with an elevated level of Lp(a). This call applies to the in-hospital stay and also beyond. When considering that the vasculopathic effects of COVID-19 may persist, a long-term follow-up of individualized therapies in FH patients is warranted.Peer reviewe

Familial hypercholesterolemia and COVID-19 : A menacing but treatable vasculopathic condition

Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The AuthorsSARS-CoV-2 infection continues to cause increased morbidity and mortality, and due to the slow pace of vaccination COVID-19 will probably remain a global burden to health systems for a long time. Unfortunately, the necessary prevention and treatment strategies of COVID-19 have led to restriction measures that are hampering the routine care of common chronic metabolic conditions like hypercholesterolemia. It is of particular concern that during the acute phase of COVID-19, the control of pre-existing metabolic diseases tends to get worse which again increases the risk for complications and a poor outcome in these patients. A significant contributor to these complications is endothelial dysfunction which is associated with COVID-19. This Commentary will discuss the impact of COVID-19 on endothelial function particularly in patients with familial hypercholesterolemia (FH), a metabolic inherited disease known to in itself adversely affect endothelial function. There should be no hesitation to continue with statin therapy in severe hypercholesterolemic patients with COVID-19. We argue that in FH patients with COVID-19 the clinicians need even consider intensifying statin therapy as well as the addition of other lipid-lowering agents, such as proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9(PCSK9) inhibitors. In contrast to statins, the PCSK9 inhibitors lower lipoprotein(a) [Lp(a)] level, and, accordingly, these latter drugs need to be considered particularly in FH patients with an elevated level of Lp(a). This call applies to the in-hospital stay and also beyond. When considering that the vasculopathic effects of COVID-19 may persist, a long-term follow-up of individualized therapies in FH patients is warranted.Peer reviewe

Duty of Notification and Aviation SafetyA Study of Fatal Aviation Accidents in the United States in 2015

After the Germanwings accident, the French Safety Investigation Authority (BEA) recommended that the World Health Organization (WHO) and European Community (EC) develop clear rules for the duty of notification process. Aeromedical practitioners (AMEs) face a dilemma when considering the duty of notification and conflicts between pilot privacy and public and third-party safety. When balancing accountability, knowledge of the duty of notification process, legislation and the clarification of a doctor's own set of values should be assessed a priori. Relatively little is known of the magnitude of this problem in aviation safety. To address this, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) database was searched to identify fatal accidents during 2015 in the United States in which a deceased pilot used a prescribed medication or had a disease that potentially reduced pilot performance and was not reported to the AME. Altogether, 202 finalized accident reports with toxicology were available from (the year) 2015. In 5% (10/202) of these reports, the pilot had either a medication or a disease not reported to an AME which according to the accident investigation was causal to the fatal accident. In addition, the various approaches to duty of notification in aviation in New Zealand, Finland and Norway are discussed. The process of notification of authorities without a pilot's express permission needs to be carried out by using a guidance protocol that works within legislation and professional responsibilities to address the pilot and the public, as well as the healthcare provider. Professional guidance defining this duty of notification is urgently needed.Peer reviewe

Lake eutrophication and brownification downgrade availability and transfer of essential fatty acids for human consumption

Fish are an important source of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) for birds, mammals and humans. In aquatic food webs, these highly unsaturated fatty acids (HUFA) are essential for many physiological processes and mainly synthetized by distinct phytoplankton taxa. Consumers at different trophic levels obtain essential fatty acids from their diet because they cannot produce these sufficiently de novo. Here, we evaluated how the increase in phosphorus concentration (eutrophication) or terrestrial organic matter inputs (brownification) change EPA and DHA content in the phytoplankton. Then, we evaluated whether these changes can be seen in the EPA and DHA content of piscivorous European perch (Perca fluviatilis), which is a widely distributed species and commonly consumed by humans. Data from 713 lakes showed statistically significant differences in the abundance of EPA- and DHA-synthesizing phytoplankton as well as in the concentrations and content of these essential fatty acids among oligo-mesotrophic, eutrophic and dystrophic lakes. The EPA and DHA content of phytoplankton biomass (mg HUFA g(-1)) was significantly lower in the eutrophic lakes than in the oligo-mesotrophic or dystrophic lakes. We found a strong significant correlation between the DHA content in the muscle of piscivorous perch and phytoplankton DHA content (r = 0.85) as well with the contribution of DHA-synthesizing phytoplankton taxa (r = 0.83). Among all DHA-synthesizing phytoplankton this correlation was the strongest with the dinoflagellates (r = 0.74) and chrysophytes (r = 0.70). Accordingly, the EPA + DHA content of perch muscle decreased with increasing total phosphorus (r(2) = 0.80) and dissolved organic carbon concentration (r(2) = 0.83) in the lakes. Our results suggest that although eutrophication generally increase biomass production across different trophic levels, the high proportion of low-quality primary producers reduce EPA and DHA content in the food web up to predatory fish. Ultimately, it seems that lake eutrophication and brownification decrease the nutritional quality of fish for human consumers. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.Peer reviewe

Topologically massive gravito-electrodynamics: exact solutions

We construct two classes of exact solutions to the field equations of topologically massive electrodynamics coupled to topologically massive gravity in 2 + 1 dimensions. The self-dual stationary solutions of the first class are horizonless, asymptotic to the extreme BTZ black-hole metric, and regular for a suitable parameter domain. The diagonal solutions of the second class, which exist if the two Chern-Simons coupling constants exactly balance, include anisotropic cosmologies and static solutions with a pointlike horizon.Comment: 15 pages, LaTeX, no figure

Spinor formulation of topologically massive gravity

In the framework of real 2-component spinors in three dimensional space-time we present a description of topologically massive gravity (TMG) in terms of differential forms with triad scalar coefficients. This is essentially a real version of the Newman-Penrose formalism in general relativity. A triad formulation of TMG was considered earlier by Hall, Morgan and Perjes, however, due to an unfortunate choice of signature some of the spinors underlying the Hall-Morgan-Perjes formalism are real, while others are pure imaginary. We obtain the basic geometrical identities as well as the TMG field equations including a cosmological constant for the appropriate signature. As an application of this formalism we discuss the Bianchi Type $VIII - IX$ exact solutions of TMG and point out that they are parallelizable manifolds. We also consider various re-identifications of these homogeneous spaces that result in black hole solutions of TMG.Comment: An expanded version of paper published in Classical and Quantum Gravity 12 (1995) 291