Potato is the world's fourth largest food crop yet it continues to endure late blight, a devastating disease caused by the Irish famine pathogen Phytophthora infestans. Breeding broad-spectrum disease resistance (R) genes into potato (Solanum tuberosum) is the best strategy for genetically managing late blight but current approaches are slow and inefficient. We used a repertoire of effector gen...

AIMS Regional myocardial function may change differently in different pathology. Speckle tracking echocardiography (STE) was applied to evaluate longitudinal, radial, and circumferential function in patients with aortic stenosis (AS) before, within 1 week, and 6 months after aortic valve replacement (AVR). METHODS AND RESULTS In 40 consecutive patients with severe AS, we acquired apical four-...

OBJECTIVE Surgical aortic valve replacement (AVR) remains the gold standard therapy for severe aortic stenosis. Long-term survival data following AVR is required. Our objective was to provide a detailed contemporary benchmark of long-term survival following AVR among elderly patients (≥65 years) in the UK. METHODS We conducted a retrospective cohort study of 1815 adult patients undergoing sur...

OBJECTIVE To assess whether the use of inverted lead aVR (-aVR) would improve the classification of acute inferior or lateral myocardial infarction presenting with ST elevation. DESIGN Observational study. The presence of >/= 1 mm ST elevation in lead -aVR (derived by manual assessment of ST depression in conventional lead aVR) was determined by a single investigator, blinded to patient outco...

OBJECTIVES Minimally invasive cardiac surgery has been developed to offer patients the benefits of open heart operations with decreased pain and limited skin incision. A limited superior median sternotomy has been shown to provide a good exposure for aortic valve replacement (AVR) and good results. In this study we report the results of minimally invasive AVR compared to standard sternotomy AVR...

BACKGROUND:Treadmill testing (TMT) is the most widely used method for evaluating patients with coronary artery disease, predicting the left main coronary artery (LMCA) disease before invasive procedure is very important in risk assessment because of its severe clinical outcome. Lead aVR can be very useful in identifying LMCA obstruction, it is also valuable lead not only in diagnosis but also i...

BACKGROUND In patients with severe aortic stenosis (AS), long-term data tracking surgically induced effects of afterload reduction on reverse LV remodeling are not available. Echocardiographic data is available short term, but in limited fashion beyond one year. Cardiovascular MRI (CMR) offers the ability to serially track changes in LV metrics with small numbers due to its inherent high spatia...

AIMS A variety of antithrombotic regimens have been described for the early postoperative period after bioprosthetic aortic valve replacement (AVR). This study reviews antithrombotic practice for patients undergoing bioprosthetic AVR with or without coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) amongst the centers participating in the ACTION (Anticoagulation Treatment Influence on Postoperative Patients)...