BACKGROUND Many myocardial infarctions and strokes occur in individuals with low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels below recommended treatment thresholds. High sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) testing has been advocated to identify low- and intermediate-risk individuals who may benefit from statin therapy. METHODS AND RESULTS A decision analytic Markov model was used to follow hyp...

Heparan sulfate (HS) has been shown to be involved in left-right asymmetry formation, including the process of dextral heart looping during embryonic development. The structural features of HS required in this process, however, have not been explored. In this study, we examined the structure of HS from the heart-forming regions (or heart fields) of Hamburger and Hamilton stage 5-9 chick embryos...

Compositional alterations to high-entropy alloys (HEAs) allow further evolution of these materials by adjusting their property profiles. This way, they can be used for coating technologies and surface-protection applications. In the present work, minor quantities non-metallic alloying constituents, BSiC, were added CrFeNi base system. The alloy development was carried out in an electric arc fur...

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is an autoimmune disease in which insulin-producing beta cells in pancreatic islets are progressively destroyed. Clinical trials of immunotherapies in recently diagnosed T1D patients have only transiently and partially impacted the disease course, suggesting that other approaches are required. Our previous studies have demonstrated that heparan sulfate (HS), a glycosaminog...

Background Recent studies on high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T (hs-cTnT) and whole blood passage time (WBPT), estimated by hemorheology assessed with the microchannel array flow analyzer (MC-FAN), have revealed the significance of cardiovascular risk factors. However, there are no known reports on the relationship between these two clinical parameters. This cross-sectional study aimed to clar...

OBJECTIVE This investigation examined data on unplanned pregnancies following hysteroscopic sterilization (HS). METHODS A confidential questionnaire was used to collect data from women with medically confirmed pregnancy (n=103) registered after undergoing HS. RESULTS Mean (±SD) patient age and body mass index (BMI) were 29.5±4.6 years and 27.7±6.1 kg/m(2), respectively. Peak pregnancy incid...

The aim of this study was to investigate the clinical application of a high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T (hs-cTnT) test in the diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Serum levels of hs-cTnT and cardiac troponin I (cTnI) were detected in 240 AMI patients and 200 healthy donors and used to plot receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. A clinically applicable diagnostic cut-off v...

Circumsporozoite protein (CSP) coats the malarial sporozoite and functions to target the liver for infection, which is the first step to developing malaria. An important tissue ligand for CSP is the glycosaminoglycan heparan sulfate (HS) found on the surface of hepatocytes and in the basement membrane of the space of Disse. To better understand this efficient targeting process, we set out to id...

BACKGROUND We hypothesized that high-sensitivity cardiac troponin (hs-cTn) and its early change are useful in distinguishing acute myocardial infarction (AMI) from acute cardiac noncoronary artery disease. METHODS AND RESULTS In a prospective, international multicenter study, hs-cTn was measured with 3 assays (hs-cTnT, Roche Diagnostics; hs-cTnI, Beckman-Coulter; hs-cTnI Siemens) in a blinded...

Heparan sulfate (HS) proteoglycans play critical roles in a wide variety of biological processes such as growth factor signaling, cell adhesion, wound healing, and tumor metastasis. Functionally important interactions between HS and a variety of proteins depend on specific structural features within the HS chains. The fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) is frequently applied as a model organism...