Cardiac Autonomic Nervous System in Heart Failure: Imaging Technique and Clinical Implications

The autonomic nervous system interacts in the pathophysiology of heart failure. Dysfunction of the sympathetic nervous system has been identified as an important prognostic marker in patients with chronic heart failure. At present, cardiac sympathetic nerve imaging with 123-iodine metaiodobenzylguanidine [123-I MIBG] has been employed most frequently for the assessment of cardiac sympathetic innervation and activation pattern. The majority of studies have shown that cardiac sympathetic dysfunction as assessed with 123-I MIBG imaging is a powerful predictor for heart failure mortality and morbidity. Additionally, 123-I MIBG imaging can be used for prediction of potentially lethal ventricular tachyarrhythmias in heart failure patients. At present however, the lack of standardization of 123-I MIBG imaging procedures represents an evident issue. Standardized criteria on the use of 123-I MIBG imaging will further strengthen the clinical use of 123-I MIBG imaging in heart failure patients

Characterisation of the differential expression of marker antigens by normal and malignant endometrial epithelium

In order to examine the production of marker proteins, a reproducible method has been established for culturing purified epithelial cells from normal and malignant endometrium. We have examined the differential expression of secretory proteins using immunohistochemistry in frozen tissue sections, immunocytochemistry in cell cultures derived from the same specimens and protein assays on the culture supernatants. Placental protein 14 (PP14) was produced by normal premenopausal epithelium but not by the post-menopausal or malignant endometrial epithelium. In contrast, placental alkaline phosphatase (PLAP) was produced by endometrial cancers and the endometrial adenocarcinoma-derived cell line Ishikawa, but not by the normal endometrial epithelium. Other markers such as CA-125, which was produced by both normal and malignant endometrium but not by the cell line, and human chorionic gonadotrophin (beta-hCG), which was produced by Ishikawa cells but not by any of the fresh tissues, were less cancer specific. Placental alkaline phosphatase is a direct product of endometrial cancers that can be readily assayed in serum using this two-site assay to test its clinical usefulness in monitoring patients at risk for endometrial cancer

Families with infants: a general approach to solve hard partition problems

We introduce a general approach for solving partition problems where the goal is to represent a given set as a union (either disjoint or not) of subsets satisfying certain properties. Many NP-hard problems can be naturally stated as such partition problems. We show that if one can find a large enough system of so-called families with infants for a given problem, then this problem can be solved faster than by a straightforward algorithm. We use this approach to improve known bounds for several NP-hard problems as well as to simplify the proofs of several known results. For the chromatic number problem we present an algorithm with $O^*((2-\varepsilon(d))^n)$ time and exponential space for graphs of average degree $d$. This improves the algorithm by Bj\"{o}rklund et al. [Theory Comput. Syst. 2010] that works for graphs of bounded maximum (as opposed to average) degree and closes an open problem stated by Cygan and Pilipczuk [ICALP 2013]. For the traveling salesman problem we give an algorithm working in $O^*((2-\varepsilon(d))^n)$ time and polynomial space for graphs of average degree $d$. The previously known results of this kind is a polyspace algorithm by Bj\"{o}rklund et al. [ICALP 2008] for graphs of bounded maximum degree and an exponential space algorithm for bounded average degree by Cygan and Pilipczuk [ICALP 2013]. For counting perfect matching in graphs of average degree~$d$ we present an algorithm with running time $O^*((2-\varepsilon(d))^{n/2})$ and polynomial space. Recent algorithms of this kind due to Cygan, Pilipczuk [ICALP 2013] and Izumi, Wadayama [FOCS 2012] (for bipartite graphs only) use exponential space.Comment: 18 pages, a revised version of this paper is available at http://arxiv.org/abs/1410.220

IVUS detects more coronary calcifications than MSCT; matter of both resolution and cross-sectional assessment?

Vascular Biology and Interventio