Search results for " function"
showing 10 items of 9395 documents
Early subclinical ventricular dysfunction in patients with insulin resistance
2014
AIMS: The aim of our study was to evaluate the relationship between insulin resistance and the detection of precocious echocardiographic signs of heart failure in patients with cardiovascular risk factors. METHODS: We enrolled 34 consecutive patients with cardiovascular risk factors. All patients underwent coronary angiography, echocardiography, and laboratory tests. Exclusion criteria were diabetes (fasting glucose greater than 126 mg/dl or treatment with insulin or oral hypoglycemic agents), coronary artery disease, creatinine above 1.5 mg/dl, left-ventricular hypertrophy, valvular heart disease, ejection fraction below 50%, atrial fibrillation, or other severe arrhythmia. The presence of…
Metabolic and cardiopulmonary effects of detraining after a structured exercise training programme in young PCOS women
2008
Summary Objective The aim of the present study was to determine if the favourable cardiopulmonary and metabolic benefits induced by exercise training (ET) programme are maintained after its cessation. Patients Thirty-two young overweight polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) women matched for age and body mass index (BMI) with other 32 PCOS patients was enrolled. The first group [PCOS-T (trained)] underwent 24-week ET programme, whereas the second [PCOS-DT (detrained)] underwent 12-week ET programme followed by 12-week detraining period. Methods At baseline, after 12- and 24-week follow-up, all PCOS women were studied for their hormonal (ovarian and adrenal androgens), metabolic (glucose and …
Losartan reduces microalbuminuria in hypertensive microalbuminuric type 2 diabetics.
2001
Background. The aim of the present study was to assess the antialbuminuric effect of losartan in a large number of hypertensive type 2 diabetics. Methods. This was a 6-month, open-label, prospective and multicentre study. A total of 422 patients with type 2 diabetes who were hypertensive [sitting systolic blood pressure (SBP) > 140 mmHg and/or diastolic blood pressure (DBP) ≥90 mmHg] and microalbuminuric [urinary albumin excretion (UAE) 30-300 mg/day] were eligible for the study. After a 2-week run-in period, patients were placed on losartan 50 mg once a day. If the BP did not reach the desired goal (<140/90 mmHg) after a 4-week period, the losartan dose was doubled. In the absence of contr…
The platelets’ perspective to pathogen reduction technologies
2017
A wide variety of clinical conditions, associated with low circulating platelet counts, require platelet transfusion in order to normalize hemostatic function. Although single-donor apheresis platelets bear the lowest risk of transfusion-transmitted infections, pathogen reduction technologies (PRT) are being implemented worldwide to reduce this risk further through inactivation of known, emergent and as yet to be discovered nucleic acid-based pathogens. Human blood platelets are now known to harbor a diverse transcriptome, important to their function and comprised of >5000 protein-coding messenger RNAs and different classes of non-coding RNAs, including microRNAs. Our appreciation of the nu…
Haemostasis in chronic kidney disease
2013
The coagulation system has gained much interest again as new anticoagulatory substances have been introduced into clinical practice. Especially patients with renal failure are likely candidates for such a therapy as they often experience significant comorbidity including cardiovascular diseases that require anticoagulation. Patients with renal failure on new anticoagulants have experienced excessive bleeding which can be related to a changed pharmacokinetic profile of the compounds. However, the coagulation system itself, even without any interference with coagulation modifying drugs, is already profoundly changed during renal failure. Coagulation disorders with either episodes of severe bl…
High-throughput elucidation of thrombus formation reveals sources of platelet function variability
2019
In combination with microspotting, whole-blood microfluidics can provide high-throughput information on multiple platelet functions in thrombus formation. Based on assessment of the inter-and intra-subject variability in parameters of microspot-based thrombus formation, we aimed to determine the platelet factors contributing to this variation. Blood samples from 94 genotyped healthy subjects were analyzed for conventional platelet phenotyping: i.e. hematologic parameters, platelet glycoprotein (GP) expression levels and activation markers (24 parameters). Furthermore, platelets were activated by ADP, CRP-XL or TRAP. Parallel samples were investigated for whole-blood thrombus formation (6 mi…
Platelets Contribution to Thrombin Generation in Philadelphia-Negative Myeloproliferative Neoplasms: The "Circulating Wound" Model.
2021
Current cytoreductive and antithrombotic strategies in MPNs are mostly based on cell counts and on patient’s demographic and clinical history. Despite the numerous studies conducted on platelet function and on the role of plasma factors, an accurate and reliable method to dynamically quantify the hypercoagulability states of these conditions is not yet part of clinical practice. Starting from our experience, and after having sifted through the literature, we propose an in-depth narrative report on the contribution of the clonal platelets of MPNs—rich in tissue factor (TF)—in promoting a perpetual procoagulant mechanism. The whole process results in an unbalanced generation of thrombin and i…
Anti-oxidative effects and harmlessness of asymmetric Au@Fe3O4 Janus particles on human blood cells
2014
AbstractThe physical properties of asymmetric Janus particles are highly promising for future biomedical applications. However, only a few data is available on their biological impact on human cells. We investigated the biological impact of different Au@Fe3O4 Janus particle formulations in vitro to analyse specific uptake modalities and their potential cytotoxic effects on human cells of the blood regarding intravenous injection. We demonstrate that Au@Fe3O4 Janus particles exhibit a similar or even better biocompatibility compared to the well-studied spherical iron oxide nanoparticles. The impact of Janus particles on cells depends mainly on three factors. (1) Surface functionalization: NH…
Average real variability of 24-h systolic blood pressure is associated with microalbuminuria in patients with primary hypertension.
2015
Limited and conflicting data are available about the association between short-term blood pressure (BP) variability and urinary albumin excretion rate (uAER). The objective of our study was to analyze the relationships between microalbuminuria (MAU), defined as an uAER between 20 and 200 μg min(-1), and short-term BP variability (BPV), assessed as average real variability (ARV), weighted s.d. of 24-h BP and as s.d. of daytime and night-time BP. The study population consisted of 315 untreated essential hypertensives with normal estimated glomerular filtration rate (>60 ml min(-1) per 1.73 m(2)), who underwent 24-h ambulatory BP monitoring and 24-h uAER determination. MAU was detected in 82 (…
Variational Aspects of the Physically-Based Approach to 3D Non-Local Continuum Mechanics
2010
This paper deals with the generalization to three-dimensional elasticity of the physically-based approach to non-local mechanics, recently proposed by the authors in one-dimensional case. The proposed model assumes that the equilibrium of a volume element is attained by contact forces between adjacent elements and by long-range central forces exerted by non-adjacent elements. Specifically, the long-range forces are modeled as central body forces depending on the relative displacements between the centroids of the volume elements, measured along the line connecting the centroids. Furthermore, the long-range forces are assumed to be proportional to a proper, material-dependent, distance-decay…