BACKGROUND Better prediction of cardiac pacing patients at risk of atrial fibrillation (AF) would enable more effective prophylaxis. We sought whether left atrial (LA) electromechanical conduction time (EMT) and myocardial mechanics were associated with incident AF in patients undergoing dual chamber pacemaker implantation, independent of left atrial volume (LAV). METHODS AND RESULTS Clinical...

BACKGROUND The common pathophysiological consequences of chronic mitral regurgitation (MR) are left atrial (LA) remodeling/dilatation and pulmonary hypertension (PH). We aimed to study the association between LA volume (LAV) and PH in patients with chronic organic MR. METHODS We prospectively studied 154 patients (age 55.0 ± 16.4 years, 39.6 % female) with isolated moderate to severe chronic ...

The development of instrumentation for sequential injection analysis with a "lab-at-valve" (SIA-LAV) micro-extraction system is presented. The extractive determination of an anionic surfactant using methylene blue was selected as a model. Sample, reagents and organic solvent were sequentially aspirated into an extraction coil connected to the center of a selection valve, where extraction took p...

Data Integration is the process of combining data residing at different sources with associated local schemas to form a single virtual database with an associated global schema [1, 2]. This is to provide the user with a uniform query interface for multiple independent heterogeneous data sources [3, 4]. There are four main approaches of data integration. They are Global As view (GAV), Local As V...

The present studies were initiated to define the coding region of a 34 kilodalton (kd) protein (p34) frequently observed with antibodies from HTLV-III/LAV-infected people by immunoblotting and radioimmunoprecipitation (RIP) techniques. We have directly mapped this viral protein to the pol gene of HTLV-III/LAV by radiolabeled amino acid sequence analysis. This region at the 3' end of the pol gen...

To assess the hypothesis that gap junctions (GJs) participate on leukocyte-endothelium interactions in the inflammatory response, we compared leukocyte adhesion and transmigration elicited by cytokine stimulation in the presence or absence of GJ blockers in the hamster cheek pouch and also in the cremaster muscle of wild-type (WT) and endothelium-specific connexin 43 (Cx43) null mice (Cx43e(-/-...

AIMS The objectives of this study were to determine the long-term outcome and the predictors of adverse events in patients originally diagnosed with lone atrial fibrillation (AF). METHODS AND RESULTS This population-based historical cohort study comprised 46 residents of Olmsted County, MN, USA, with well-documented, clinically defined lone AF and a complete two-dimensional echocardiographic ...

To establish when lymphadenopathy associated virus or human T lymphotropic virus (LAV/HTLV-III) was introduced into the Netherlands, we studied a cohort of homosexual men who participated in a hepatitis B vaccine efficacy study between 1980 and 1982. On entry into the study (November 1980 to December 1981) five (0.7%) out of 685 participants were found to have antibodies to LAV/HTLV-III, and du...

BACKGROUND Left atrial volume (LAV) estimation with 3D echocardiography has been shown to be more accurate than 2D volume calculation. However, little is known about the possible effect of respiratory movements on the accuracy of the measurement. METHODS 100 consecutive patients admitted with chest pain were examined with 3D echocardiography and LAV was quantified during inspiratory breath ho...