Search results for " Heart"
showing 10 items of 741 documents
Transitional hemodynamics in infants of diabetic mothers by targeted neonatal echocardiography, electrocardiography and peripheral flow study
2017
Objective: Metabolic alterations of intrauterine environment in diabetes mellitus (DM) lead to fetal cardiac dysfunctions that can persist after birth. The aim of the study was to assess the cardiovascular adaptation in infants born to diabetic mothers (IDM) with different degrees of glycometabolic control, in relation to revised guidelines for diagnosis of DM and quality improvements in neonatal care. Materials and methods: An observational case-control study was conducted on IDM with gestational, type 1 and type 2âDM. Relevant maternal and neonatal anamnestic, clinical and laboratory data were analyzed. Electrocardiographic and echocardiographic analyses, including structural and systo-…
Cardiovascular control and time domain granger causality: Insights from selective autonomic blockade
2013
We studied causal relations among heart period (HP), systolic arterial pressure (SAP) and respiration (R) according to the definition of Granger causality in the time domain. Autonomic pharmacological challenges were used to alter the complexity of cardiovascular control. Atropine (AT), propranolol and clonidine (CL) were administered to block muscarinic receptors, β-adrenergic receptors and centrally sympathetic outflow, respectively. We found that: (i) at baseline, HP and SAP interacted in a closed loop with a dominant causal direction from HP to SAP; (ii) pharmacological blockades did not alter the bidirectional closed-loop interactions between HP and SAP, but AT reduced the dominance of…
Editor's Note: Relates to: ‘Familial hypercholesterolaemia is underdiagnosed and undertreated in the general population: guidance for clinicians to p…
2020
Aims The first aim was to critically evaluate the extent to which familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH) is underdiagnosed and undertreated. The second aim was to provide guidance for screening and treatment of FH, in order to prevent coronary heart disease (CHD). Methods and results Of the theoretical estimated prevalence of 1/500 for heterozygous FH, <1% are diagnosed in most countries. Recently, direct screening in a Northern European general population diagnosed approximately 1/200 with heterozygous FH. All reported studies document failure to achieve recommended LDL cholesterol targets in a large proportion of individuals with FH, and up to 13-fold increased risk of CHD. Based on prevalen…
Instantaneous transfer entropy for the study of cardio-respiratory dynamics
2015
Measures of transfer entropy have been proposed to quantify the directional coupling and strength between two complex physiological variables. Particular attention has been given to nonlinear interactions within cardiovascular and respiratory dynamics as influenced by the autonomic nervous system. However, standard transfer entropy estimates have shown major limitations in dealing with issues concerning stochastic system modeling, limited observations in time, and the assumption of stationarity of the considered physiological variables. Moreover, standard estimates are unable to track time-varying changes in nonlinear coupling with high resolution in time. Here, we propose a novel definitio…
Instantaneous Transfer Entropy for the Study of Cardiovascular and Cardio-Respiratory Nonstationary Dynamics
2017
Objective: Measures of transfer entropy (TE) quantify the direction and strength of coupling between two complex systems. Standard approaches assume stationarity of the observations, and therefore are unable to track time-varying changes in nonlinear information transfer with high temporal resolution. In this study, we aim to define and validate novel instantaneous measures of TE to provide an improved assessment of complex nonstationary cardiorespiratory interactions. Methods: We here propose a novel instantaneous point-process TE (ipTE) and validate its assessment as applied to cardiovascular and cardiorespiratory dynamics. In particular, heartbeat and respiratory dynamics are characteriz…
Associations of parental education and parental physical activity (PA) with children's PA: The ENERGY cross‐sectional study
2012
OBJECTIVE The present study sought to examine the independent associations of parental education and physical activity (PA) with children's PA across Europe. METHODS A total of 7214 children (10-12 years) were recruited from a school-based cross-sectional survey during 2010 in seven European countries. Weight and height were measured. Parental educational level (PEL) and parents' and children's PA were collected using self-reported questionnaires. Multiple linear regression models were used, comparing children's PA with PEL and PA levels. RESULTS PEL was directly associated with children's PA in Greek and Spanish girls (all P < 0.01) and boys’ PA in Norway (all P < 0.05). Paternal education…
Body size at birth and coronary heart disease-related hospital care in adult men : Findings from the Helsinki Birth Cohort Study
2017
Aim: We investigated, among those who had been hospitalized at least once due to coronary heart disease (CHD), the relationship between ponderal index (PI, birthweight/length3) at birth, a measure of thinness, and the age at first hospitalization due to CHD, the number of CHD-related hospital care episodes, and cost of CHD-related hospital care from young adulthood to old age. Methods and results: Data from the Helsinki Birth Cohort Study included 964 men born in Helsinki, Finland during 1934–1944, who had been hospitalized due to CHD and had birth anthropometrics data. PI (kg/m3) was categorized into low (27.5). CHD-related hospital care data were available from 1971 to 2013. We observed a…
Latvian registry of familial hypercholesterolemia: The first report of three-year results.
2018
Abstract Background and aims Familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) was rarely diagnosed in Latvia before 2015, when the Latvian Registry of FH (LRFH) was established. Here, we report the first experience of the LRFH over three years (2015–2017). Methods The LRFH is an ongoing nationwide, dynamic, long-term prospective cohort. The diagnosis of FH was assessed using the Dutch Lipid Clinic Network (DLCN) criteria. Cascade screening of first-degree relatives using age- and sex-specific percentiles of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) was performed in relatives of patients with definite and probable FH. Results Among the 416 individuals included in the LRFH, 181 patients were diagnosed wi…
Establishing the upper reference limit of Galectin-3 in healthy blood donors
2017
Introduction Galectin-3 (Gal-3) is an independent predictor of poor outcomes and mortality in patients with heart failure (HF). Thus, it has been proposed as a reliable prognostic biomarker for HF. The definition of reference intervals is mandatory for interpreting the findings of experimental studies and encouraging the routine use of biomarkers in clinical practice. To date, no study assessed the reference intervals of Gal-3 and identified the biological variables that affect its concentration in a well-defined healthy population. The aim of this study was to determine the upper reference limit (URL) of Gal-3 in a highly reliable population of healthy subjects. Materials and methods We re…
Categorizing the Role of Respiration in Cardiovascular and Cerebrovascular Variability Interactions
2022
Objective: Respiration disturbs cardiovascular and cerebrovascular controls but its role is not fully elucidated. Methods: Respiration can be classified as a confounder if its observation reduces the strength of the causal relationship from source to target. Respiration is a suppressor if the opposite situation holds. We prove that a confounding/suppression (C/S) test can be accomplished by evaluating the sign of net redundancy/synergy balance in the predictability framework based on multivariate autoregressive modelling. In addition, we suggest that, under the hypothesis of Gaussian processes, the C/S test can be given in the transfer entropy decomposition framework as well. Experimental p…