BACKGROUND The association between blood pressure (BP) and diabetic kidney diseases in Africans has been less well investigated. We assessed and compared the strength of the association and discriminatory capability of systolic (SBP), diastolic (DBP) BP, pulse pressure (PP) and mean arterial blood pressure (MAP) for nephropathy risk in sub-Saharan Africans with type 2 diabetes. METHODS Partic...

We describe the design, fabrication, and use of a radio frequency reflectometer integrated with a microfluidic system, applied to the very high-throughput measurement of micron-scale particles, passing in a microfluidic channel through the sensor region. The device operates as a microfabricated Coulter counter [U.S. Patent No. 2656508 (1953)], similar to a design we have described previously, b...

BACKGROUND Growth differentiation factor-15 (GDF-15) is a stress-responsive marker that might aid in the early diagnosis and risk stratification of patients with suspected acute myocardial infarction (AMI). METHODS In a prospective, international multicenter study, GDF-15, high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T (hs-cTnT), and B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) were measured in 646 unselected patie...

A characteristic feature of primary cervical dystonia is the presence of "sensory tricks" as well as the impairment of temporal and spatial sensory discrimination on formal testing. The aim of the present study was to test whether the amount of improvement of abnormal head deviation due to a sensory trick is associated with different performance of temporal sensory discrimination in patients wi...

BACKGROUND Distribution of body fat is more important than the amount of fat as a prognostic factor for life expectancy. Despite that, body mass index (BMI) still holds its status as the most used indicator of obesity in clinical work. METHODS We assessed the association of five different anthropometric measures with mortality in general and cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality in particula...

OBJECTIVE Using numeric laboratory data and administrative data from hospital electronic health record (EHR) systems, to develop an inpatient mortality predictive model. METHODS Using EHR data of 1,428,824 adult discharges from 70 hospitals in 2006-2007, we developed the Acute Laboratory Risk of Mortality Score (ALaRMS) using age, gender, and initial laboratory values on admission as candidat...

BACKGROUND Memory disorders and Alzheimer's disease (AD) share the same risk factors with cardiovascular diseases. OBJECTIVE We tested whether elevated N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) levels would predict any incident dementia or AD. METHODS The association between NT-proBNP and the risk of dementia was evaluated in a total of 7,158 subjects without previous memory diso...

Circulating cell-free DNA (cfDNA) has been described as a prognostic marker for several diseases. Its prognostic value for short-term outcome in stroke patients treated with intravenous thrombolysis remains unexplored. cfDNA was measured on admission in 54 tissue plasminogen activator (tPA)-treated patients and 15 healthy controls using a real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction assay. ...

Risk stratification of patients with systolic chronic heart failure (HF) is critical to better identify those who may benefit from invasive therapeutic strategies such as cardiac transplantation. Proteomics has been used to provide prognostic information in various diseases. Our aim was to investigate the potential value of plasma proteomic profiling for risk stratification in HF. A proteomic p...