Introduction Schizophrenia is a mental disorder with a prevalence rate of 1% of the adult population in the world. The clinical manifestations include auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking with significant social or occupational dysfunction. To date, data from neruoimaging studies has provided important evidence implicating that white matter...

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a common arrhythmia. Better prevention and treatment of AF are needed to reduce AF-associated morbidity and mortality. There are several major mechanisms that cause AF in patients, including a genetic predisposition to develop AF. Genome-wide association studies have identified genetic variants associated with AF populations, with the strongest hits clustering on chr...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most frequent arrhythmia in elderly patients. Aims of this study were to evaluate the predictors of arterial stiffness after external cardioversion (ECV) of AF and to establish whether a link exists between vascular properties and left atrial diameter (LAD). METHODS We studied 33 patients (age 73 ± 12 years). After 5 h from ECV of persistent...

background: atrial fibrillation (af) is prevalent among cardiac patients; and as the risk of thromboembolism is high in this arrhythmia, discrimination of the effective risk factors in producing left atrial (la) thrombosis is clinically important. the molecular structure of lipoprotein(a) [lp(a)] is very similar to plasminogen , so it can be hypothesized that the high level of lp(a) is a compro...

Gonadotropin surge-inhibiting/attenuating factor (GnSIF/AF) has been known for over two decades, but its molecular structure has not been completely characterized yet. In the last 20 years, five different putative GnSIF/AF sequences have been published. In this article, we describe a procedure to isolate and characterize GnSIF/AF from bovine follicular fluid. A GnSIF/ AF-derived synthetic pepti...

INTRODUCTION The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between serum peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ (PPAR-γ) protein concentration and inflammatory markers in elderly patients with atrial fibrillation (AF). MATERIAL AND METHODS We enrolled a total of 73 elderly patients: 45 with AF as the test group and 28 in sinus rhythm as a control group. We assayed serum PPAR-γ...

Pericardial adiposity is strongly associated with increased cardiovascular risk, especially for coronary artery disease. However, until 2010 researchers have not focused on the mechanistic role of pericardial fat in atrial fibrillation (AF) pathogenesis. Only a limited number of studies have reported on the significant association between pericardial fat and AF prevalence, and the role of peric...

The mechanism underlying thrombosis in atrial fibrillation (AF) is not yet clearly understood. Oncostatin M (OSM), as a member of IL-6 family, is involved in atherosclerosis-mediated thrombosis. The present study hypothesizes that OSM and its downstream factors play a role in thrombogenesis in AF.The specimens of left atrial appendages collected from patients with rheumatic mitral stenosis who ...

BACKGROUND Obesity is considered to be related to recurrence of atrial fibrillation (AF), left atrial thrombus formation, and atrial remodeling. However, whether obesity is an independent risk factor for stroke and other thromboembolic events is still controversial. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to investigate the effects of body mass index (BMI) on the risks of stroke, thromboembolism, and mort...

BACKGROUND Although hyperuricemia was associated with several cardiovascular diseases, the role of uric acid (UA) in left atrial (LA) remodeling and new-onset atrial fibrillation (AF) has not been fully explored. The goal of the present study is to investigate the relationship between UA, LA diameter and the development of AF in the large-scale cohort. METHODS The study consisted of 2 parts. ...