AIM The cardiothoracic ratio (CTR) on a chest X-ray is an indicator of cardiac enlargement, although its predictive power for cardiovascular disease (CVD) events in chronic kidney disease is unknown. We examined it in a cohort of hemodialysis patients, as compared with an N-terminal fragment of probrain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP). METHOD This was an observational study with cross-section...

BACKGROUND More than seventeen million Americans are afflicted with diabetes and these people have four times the rate of coronary heart disease (CHD) as non-diabetics. Furthermore, diabetic women have a 3.8 fold greater risk for CHD compared to diabetic men. Little is known why diabetic women are at an increased risk for CHD. It is possible that diabetic women with cardiovascular disease (CVD)...

BACKGROUND A cardio-ankle vascular index (CAVI) has been developed to represent the extent of arteriosclerosis throughout the aorta, femoral artery and tibial artery independent of blood pressure. To practically use CAVI as a diagnostic tool for determining the extent of arteriosclerosis, our study objectives were (1) to establish the baseline CAVI scores by age and gender among cardiovascular ...

High purity single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) were synthesized from ethanol by catalytic CVD method. The yield of SWNTs was determined based on TGA complemented by Raman and TEM analyses. The effects of CVD reaction time and pre-reduction of catalytic metal on the yield and quality of synthesized SWNTs were investigated. The SWNT yield of more than 40% was achieved over the weight of zeoli...

Cerebrovascular disease (CVD) is often present in old age and may be associated with microstructural pathology of white matter (WM) and cognitive dysfunction. The current review investigated the relationship between CVD, cognitive status and WM integrity as assessed by diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Methods DTI studies were searched on ISI and Pubmed databases from 2002 to 2012. Results St...

Films of vertically aligned single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) with a few μm thickness were grown by catalytic chemical vapor deposition (CVD) on quartz substrates. Low-temperature CVD from ethanol was performed by using densely mono-dispersed Co-Mo catalyst of ≈ 1.0 – 2.0 nm prepared on quartz substrates by a dip-coating method. Continuous reduction of catalysts with Ar/H2 (3% H2) during C...