Combined Effects of Family History of Cardiovascular Disease and Serum C-reactive Protein Level on the Risk of Stroke: A 9.2-year Prospective Study among Mongolians in China

Objective We aimed to evaluate the combined effect of a family history of cardiovascular disease（CVD） and high serum C‐reactive protein（CRP） on the stroke incidence in an Inner Mongolian population in China. Methods A prospective cohort study was conducted from June 2002 to July 2012, with 2,544 participants aged 20 years and over from Inner Mongolia, China. We categorized participants into four groups based on the family history of CVD and CRP levels. Results We adjusted for age; sex; smoking; drinking; hypertension; body mass index; waist circumference; and blood glucose, triglycerides, low‐density lipoprotein cholesterol, and high‐density lipoprotein cholesterol levels. Compared with the group with no family history of CVD/low CRP levels, the group with family history of CVD/high CRP levels had a hazard ratio（HR） of 1.78 [95% confidence interval（CI）, 1.03‐3.07; P = 0.039] of stroke, and an HR of 2.14（95% CI, 1.09‐4.20; P = 0.027） of ischemic stroke. The HRs of hemorrhagic stroke for the other three groups were not statistically significant（all P 〉 0.05）. Conclusion Participants with both a family history of CVD and high CRP levels had the highest stroke incidence, suggesting that high CRP levels may increase stroke risk, especially of ischemic stroke, among individuals with a family history of CVD.

Obesity and the risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes mellitus

The increasing prevalence of obesity worldwide has many experts concerned about the worsening health of a large proportion of the population. It is well recognized that obesity is associated with a higher mortality, an increased risk of hypertension and hyperlipidemia, cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus, osteoarthritis, gall bladder disease and possibly some cancers. Currently it is estimated that over two thirds of adults in the United States are overweight and nearly one third are clinically obese.1 Of special concern is the rapid increase in obesity among children. Other countries both developed and developing are experiencing similar trends.……

Pharmacological Effects and Molecular Mechanism of Osthole

Osthole has various pharmacological effects such as anti-cancer,anti-inflammation,prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases and neuroprotection.This paper reviews the advances in the research of the pharmacological effects and molecular mechanisms of osthole,in order to provide new ideas for further research and clinical application of osthole.

Dyslipidemia and cardiovascular disease risk factors in patients with type 1 diabetes:A single-center experience

BACKGROUND Type 1 diabetes(T1D)contributes to altered lipid profiles and increases the risk of cardiovascular disease(CVD).Youth with T1D may have additional CVD risk factors within the first decade of diagnosis.AIM To examine risk factors for dyslipidemia in young subjects with T1D.METHODS Longitudinal and cross-sectional retrospective study of 170 young subjects with T1D(86 males;baseline mean age 12.2±5.6 years and hemoglobin A1c 8.4%±1.4%)were followed in a single tertiary diabetes center for a median duration of 15 years.Predictors for outcomes of lipid profiles at last visit(total cholesterol[TC],triglycerides[TGs],low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol[LDL-c],and highdensity lipoprotein-cholesterol[HDL-c])were analyzed by stepwise linear regression models.RESULTS At baseline,79.5%of the patients had at least one additional CVD risk factor(borderline dyslipidemia/dyslipidemia[37.5%],pre-hypertension/hypertension[27.6%],and overweight/obesity[16.5%])and 41.6%had multiple(≥2)CVD risk factors.A positive family history of at least one CVD risk factor in a first-degree relative was reported in 54.1%of the cohort.Predictors of elevated TC:family history of CVD(β[SE]=23.1[8.3],P=0.006);of elevated LDL-c:baseline diastolic blood pressure(DBP)(β[SE]=11.4[4.7],P=0.003)and family history of CVD(β[SE]=20.7[6.8],P=0.017);of elevated TGs:baseline DBP(β[SE]=23.8[9.1],P=0.010)and family history of CVD(β[SE]=31.0[13.1],P=0.020);and of low HDL-c levels:baseline DBP(β[SE]=4.8[2.1],P=0.022]).CONCLUSION Our findings suggest that elevated lipid profiles are associated with DBP and a positive family history of CVD.It is of utmost importance to prevent and control modifiable risk factors such as these,as early as childhood,given that inadequate glycemic control and elevation in blood pressure intensify the risk of dyslipidemia.

Heart Rate Variability Applied to Short-Term Cardiovascular Event Risk Assessment

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk assessment is an important instrument to enhance the clinical decision in the daily practice as well as to improve the preventive health care promoting the transfer from the hospital to patient’s home. Due to its importance, clinical guidelines recommend the use of risk scores to predict the risk of a cardiovascular disease event. Therefore, there are several well known risk assessment tools, unfortunately they present some limitations.This work addresses this problem with two different methodologies:1) combination of risk assessment tools based on fusion of Bayesian classifiers complemented with genetic algorithm optimization;2) personalization of risk assessment through the creation of groups of patients that maximize the performance of each risk assessment tool. This last approach is implemented based on subtractive clustering applied to a reduced-dimension space.Both methodologies were developed to short-term CVD risk prediction for patients with Acute Coronary Syndromes without ST segment eleva-tion (ACS-NSTEMI). Two different real patients’ datasets were considered to validate the developed strategies:1) Santa Cruz Hospital, Portugal, N=460 patients;2)LeiriaPombal Hospital Centre, Portugal, N=99 patients.This work improved the performance in relation to current risk assessment tools reaching maximum values of sensitivity, specificity and geometric mean of, respectively, 80.0%, 82.9%, 81.5%. Besides this enhancement, the proposed methodologies allow the incorporation of new risk factors, deal with missing risk factors and avoid the selection of a single tool to be applied in the daily clinical practice. In spite of these achievements, the CVD risk assessment (patient stratification) should be improved. The incorporation of new risk factors recognized as clinically significant, namely parameters derived from heart rate variability (HRV), is introduced in this work. HRV is a strong and independent predictor of mortality in patients following acute myocardial infarction. The impact of HRV parameters in the characterization of coronary artery disease (CAD) patients will be conducted during hospitalization of these patients in the Leiria-Pombal Hospital Centre (LPHC).

Cardiac regeneration: Pre-existing cardiomyocyte as the hub of novel signaling pathway

In the mammalian heart,cardiomyocytes are forced to withdraw from the cell cycle shortly after birth,limiting the ability of the heart to regenerate and repair.The development of multimodal regulation of cardiac proliferation has verified that pre-existing cardiomyocyte proliferation is an essential driver of cardiac renewal.With the continuous development of genetic lineage tracking technology,it has been revealed that cell cycle activity produces polyploid cardiomyocytes during the embryonic,juvenile,and adult stages of cardiogenesis,but newly formed mononucleated diploid cardiomyocytes also elevated sporadically during myocardial infarction.It implied that adult cardiomyocytes have a weak regenerative capacity under the condition of ischemia injury,which offers hope for the clinical treatment of myocardial infarction.However,the regeneration frequency and source of cardiomyocytes are still low,and the mechanism of regulating cardiomyocyte proliferation remains further explained.It is noteworthy to explore what force triggers endogenous cardiomyocyte proliferation and heart regeneration.Here,we focused on summarizing the recent research progress of emerging endogenous key modulators and crosstalk with other signaling pathways and furnished valuable insights into the internal mechanism of heart regeneration.In addition,myocardial transcription factors,non-coding RNAs,cyclins,and cell cycle-dependent kinases are involved in the multimodal regulation of pre-existing cardiomyocyte proliferation.Ultimately,awakening the myocardial proliferation endogenous modulator and regeneration pathways may be the final battlefield for the regenerative therapy of cardiovascular diseases.

Minutes of the 3rd World Conference of the Specialty Committee of Cardiovascular Diseases,World Federation of Chinese Medicine Societies

The 3rd World Conference of Specialty Committee of Cardiovascular Diseases,World Federation of Chinese Medicine Societies(WFCMS) was held in Beijing,China from October 18th to 19th,2008.The Conference was hosted by the Cardiovascular Specialty Committee of WFCMS and Beijing Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM), sponsored by Beijing Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese Medicine and Western Medicine.WANG Guo-qiang(Vice-

Self-powered pulse sensor for antidiastole of cardiovascular disease

With the support by the National Natural Science Foundation of China,a collaborative study by the research groups led by Prof.Li Zhou(李舟)and Prof.Wang Zhonglin(王中林)from Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems,Chinese Academy of Sciences,in cooperation with cardiologists,Prof.