Observational data suggest a link between menaquinone (MK, vitamin K2) intake and cardiovascular (CV) health. However, MK intervention trials with vascular endpoints are lacking. We investigated long-term effects of MK-7 (180 μg MenaQ7/day) supplementation on arterial stiffness in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Healthy postmenopausal women (n=244) received either placebo (n=124) or M...

Preeclampsia (PE) is characterized by an aberrant maternal cardiovascular adaptation to pregnancy and increased cardiovascular risk later on in life. The aim of this study was to compare the maternal wave reflections and arterial stiffness in women with established PE and those with normotensive pregnancies, after systematic adjustment for known confounders. This was a cross-sectional study inv...

SIR—We read with interest Fantin’s cross-sectional study comparing the influence of age on arterial stiffness using the technique of applanation tonometry with pulse wave analysis (PWA) [1]. Their study is particularly welcome since the literature contains few direct comparisons of different markers of arterial stiffness [2]. The overall PWA completion rate was 66% (302/458) for carotid tonomet...

Excised anterior mitral leaflets exhibit anisotropic, non-linear material behavior with pre-transitional stiffness ranging from 0.06 to 0.09 N/mm(2) and post-transitional stiffness from 2 to 9 N/mm(2). We used inverse finite element (FE) analysis to test, for the first time, whether the anterior mitral leaflet (AML), in vivo, exhibits similar non-linear behavior during isovolumic relaxation (IV...

In this work, we analyze the baseline, signal strength, aortic augmentation index (AIx), radial AIx, time to reflection and P_T2 at Chon, Gwan, and Cheok, which are the three pulse diagnosis positions in Oriental medicine. For the pulse measurement, we used the SphygmoCor apparatus, which has been widely used for the evaluation of the arterial stiffness at the aorta. By two-way repeated measure...

OBJECTIVES To describe a novel canine castless partial carpal arthrodesis plate (par-CA) and its ex vivo biomechanical comparison with T-plate and cross pinning techniques for canine partial carpal arthrodesis. METHODS The three implant systems were applied to three cohorts of six forelimbs from Greyhounds euthanatized for reasons unrelated to the study. Intercarpal and carpometacarpal palmar...

This paper investigates the effectiveness of four different soft computing methods, namely radial basis neural network (RBNN), adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) with subtractive clustering (ANFIS-SC), ANFIS with fuzzy c-means clustering (ANFIS-FCM) and M5 model tree (M5Tree), for predicting the ultimate strength and strain of concrete cylinders confined with fiber-reinforced polymer...

BACKGROUND Many noninvasive arterial assessment techniques have been developed, measuring different parameters of arterial stiffness and endothelial function. However, there is little data available comparing different devices within the same subject. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the repeatability and interrelationships between 3 different techniques to measure arterial s...

BACKGROUND We compared aortic stiffness, aortic impedance and pressure from wave reflections in the setting of bicuspid aortic valve (BAV) to the tricuspid aortic valve (TAV) in the absence of proximal aortic dilation. We hypothesized BAV is associated with abnormal arterial stiffness. METHODS Ten BAV subjects (47 ± 4 years, 6 male) and 13 TAV subjects (46 ± 4 years, 10 male) without signific...

BACKGROUND Arterial stiffening is an independent predictor for cardiovascular mortality. Preliminary studies have shown that arterial calcification may have an impact on increased vascular stiffness. However, there are limited data about the role of calcification inhibitor osteoprotegerin (OPG) as an independent predictor for arterial stiffness in patients with peripheral arterial disease (PAD)...