Objective To investigate the relationship between estimated glucose disposal rate (eGDR) and the incidence of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in individuals without diabetes and those with diabetes. Methods Participants were drawn from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study from 2011 to 2018. Participants were divided into four subgroups based on quartiles of baseline eGDR. In this study, data were analyzed using Kaplan-Meier survival curves, Cox proportional hazards models, restricted cubic spline curves, subgroup analyses, and receiver operator characteristic curves. Results A total of 6 283 participants were included. Among them, 47.2% are male, with an average age of (59.6±9.5) years; 285 cases (4.5%) had diabetes; there were 1 571 cases in Q1 group, 1 572 cases in Q2 group, 1 583 cases in Q3 group, and 1 557 cases in Q4 group. A total of 761 CVD events occurred. According to the multivariate-adjusted model, baseline eGDR levels were significantly associated with the risk of CVD events (P<0.05). Baseline eGDR was associated with the risk of CVD events in individuals without diabetes (P<0.05), but the results were not entirely consistent for those with diabetes [CVD: hazard ratio (HR)=0.85, 95% confidence interval (CI) (0.75, 0.96), P=0.012; heart disease: HR=0.91, 95%CI (0.78, 1.06), P=0.211; stroke: HR=0.74, 95%CI (0.58, 0.93), P=0.012]. Restricted cubic spline curves revealed significant negative linear relationships between baseline eGDR and CVD, heart disease, and stroke. Subgroup analyses with interaction testing revealed that the association between baseline eGDR and CVD was not modified by age, sex, smoking status, alcohol consumption, or dyslipidemia. Receiver operator characteristic curves further demonstrated that baseline eGDR exhibited significantly better predictive performance than the triglyceride-glucose (TyG) index, obesity indices, and the TyG index-obesity composite. Conclusions Low level baseline eGDR is associated with an increased risk of CVD in individuals without diabetes. This finding may help improve risk stratification to guide preventive measures and enhance the prognosis of CVD.
In June 2022, the American Lipid Society released "NLA scientific statement on statin intolerance: a new definition and key considerations for ASCVD risk reduction in the statin intolerant patient", which provides the latest definition, modifiable factors, and treatment strategies of statin intolerance. According to the guidelines, for statin intolerance, the statin medication regimen should be adjusted first (reducing the dose, switching to another statin, reducing the frequency of medication), and if the patient is still intolerant, non-statin drugs should be considered to reduce the risk of ASCVD in the patient. The interpretation of this guideline will help clinicians and researchers identify, manage and intervene in the statin intolerance syndrome.
Objective To measure the level of circulating endothelial progenitor cells ( EPCs) in peripheral blood of patients with acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease ( AECOPD) , and to explore the relationship between EPCs and severity markers of the disease and cardiovascular adverse outcome predictors.Methods Forty patients with COPD were recruited, including 27 at acute exacerbation phase and 13 with stable COPD from December 2010 to December 2011. Sixteen healthy nonsmokers were included as controls. Circulating EPCs were isolated by Ficoll density-gradient centrifugation and purified by Magnetic Activated Cell Sorting system. High-sensitivity C-reactive protein ( hsCRP) was estimated by using a latex immunoturbidimetric assay kit, and matrix metalloproteinase-9 ( MMP-9) was measured by enzymelinked immunosorbent assay ( ELISA) . Arterial blood gas analysis and echocardiograph were performed in the AECOPD patients. The correlations between circulating EPCs, lung function, and cardiovascular markers were investigated. Results Circulating EPCs were significantly lower in AECOPD and stable COPD patients compared with the healthy controls [ ( 5.1 ±2.6) ×103 /mL and ( 6.0 ±3.2) ×103 /mL vs. ( 9.0 ±4.3) × 103 /mL, Plt;0. 05] . EPCs had a weak correlation with hsCRP ( P = 0. 033) , but not with MMP-9. In the AECOPD patients, EPC counts were significantly inversely correlated with PASP ( pulmonary artery systolic pressure) and NT-proBNP ( amino-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide) levels, and positively with left ventricular ejection fraction. No correlations were found between EPCs and lung function, blood gas, hospital stays or smoking index. Conclusions Circulating EPCs were significantly lower in AECOPD patients compared with healthy controls, in which systemic inflammation might be involved. Decreased EPCs were correlated with cardiac dysfunction in patients with AECOPD, which may account for the increased cardiovascular risk in this population.
The peak period of cardiovascular disease (CVD) is around the time of awakening in the morning, which may be related to the surge of sympathetic activity at the end of nocturnal sleep. This paper chose 140 participants as study object, 70 of which had occurred CVD events while the rest hadn’t during a two-year follow-up period. A two-layer model was proposed to investigate whether hypnopompic heart rate variability (HRV) was informative to distinguish these two types of participants. In the proposed model, the extreme gradient boosting algorithm (XGBoost) was used to construct a classifier in the first layer. By evaluating the feature importance of the classifier, those features with larger importance were fed into the second layer to construct the final classifier. Three machine learning algorithms, i.e., XGBoost, random forest and support vector machine were employed and compared in the second layer to find out which one can achieve the highest performance. The results showed that, with the analysis of hypnopompic HRV, the XGBoost+XGBoost model achieved the best performance with an accuracy of 84.3%. Compared with conventional time-domain and frequency-domain features, those features derived from nonlinear dynamic analysis were more important to the model. Especially, modified permutation entropy at scale 1 and sample entropy at scale 3 were relatively important. This study might have significance for the prevention and diagnosis of CVD, as well as for the design of CVD-risk assessment system.
ObjectivesTo investigate the level of ankle-brachial index (ABI) of health examination population in Chongqing municipality and analyze the risk factors related to the level of ABI, so as to provide basis for effective evaluation of atherosclerotic lesions and their severity, as well as early detection, intervention and treatment of clinical cardiovascular diseases. MethodsA total of 22 886 subjects aged from 20 to 85 undergoing health examination in the medical examination center of First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University in Chongqing municipality from January to December in 2016 were retrospectively analyzed. ABI and related physiological and biochemical data were collected. The relationship between ABI and age was analyzed using stepwise logistic regression model combined with restricted cubic splines. ResultsThe detection rate of abnormal ABI was 3.31% in 22 886 subjects undergoing health examination with 2.90% in males and 3.92% in females. The subjects aged below 40 presented the highest detection rate of abnormal ABI (6.17%) with 4.72% in males and 8.66% in females. The subjects were divided into two groups, one with ABI≤0.9 and one with ABI>0.9; the differences in age and levels of body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), total cholesterol (TC), and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) between the two groups were statistically significant (allP<0.05). Multivariate stepwise logistic regression combined with restricted cubic splines showed that age, gender and BMI were presented as independent factors affecting ABI, among which the age below 40 (OR=2.885, 95%CI (2.445, 3.404),P<0.0001) was the main risk factor. A curve relating age to probability of abnormal ABI was produced after correcting for the influences of sex and BMI, stratified by gender and BMI into different subgroups, showing a U-shaped curve of decreasing initially and then increasing between the probability of abnormal ABI and age. ConclusionsThe detection rate of abnormal ABI based on individuals undergoing health examination in Chongqing municipality was 3.31%. A U-shaped curve of downward trend followed by an upward one was shown between probability of abnormal ABI and age after correcting for the influences of gender and BMI. The clinical significance of ABI≤0.9 for youth population (20 to 40 years old) without cardiovascular risk factors requires further exploration.
ObjectiveWearable devices refer to a class of monitoring devices that can be tightly integrated with the human body and are designed to continuously monitor individual's activity without impeding or restricting the user's normal activities in the process. With the rapid advancement of chips, sensors, and artificial intelligence technologies, such devices have been widely used for patients with cardiovascular diseases who require continuous health monitoring. These patients require continuous monitoring of a number of physiological indicators to assess disease progression, treatment efficacy, and recovery in the early stages of the disease, during the treatment, and in the recovery period. Traditional monitoring methods require patients to see a doctor on a regular basis with the help of fixed devices and analysis by doctors, which not only increases the financial burden of patients, but also consumes medical resources and time. However, wearable devices can collect data in real time and transmit it directly to doctors via the network, thus providing an efficient and cost-effective monitoring solution for patients. In this paper, we will review the applications, advantages and challenges of wearable devices in the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, as well as the outlook for their future applications.
Serum alkaline phosphatase (ALP) has long been used as a biomarker for the liver, kidney, and bone. Currently, increasing evidence suggests a correlation between serum ALP and cardiovascular disease (CVD). Research has shown that serum ALP affects endothelial cell function and induces changes in pyrophosphate through various mechanisms to accelerate vascular calcification and promote cardiac fibrosis. Therefore, this article reviews the potential value of serum ALP in CVD through relevant research, revealing the specific relationship between serum ALP and CVD, in order to provide new ideas for the prevention and treatment of CVD.
Abstract: The amniotic fluidderived stem cells (AFSC) possess considerable advantageous characteristics including high proliferation potential, easy availability, low immunogenicity and oncogenicity，and accordance with medical ethnics. Moreover, they do not require the sacrifice of human embryos for their isolation and the cells can differentiate into all three kinds of germs. Accordingly，they initiate a new and very promising field in stem cell research and they will be a potential source of stem cells for therapies related to regeneration medicine of cardiovascular diseases. The research about the AFSC utilization in cardiovascular diseases is just started. Though there were some exciting breakthroughs, there still remain many challenges. In the article，we will discuss AFSC characteristics, influence of amniotic fluid harvesting time on stem cells, isolation and purification, emphasizing mainly on the potential of AFSC differentiation into cardiovascular cells, current situation and problems in this field.
With the heavier burden of cardiovascular disease, an abundance of papers emerge every year in the research hotspots, which cover a wide range of types and content. In order to let readers interested in the cardiovascular field quickly understand the research hotspots and research frontier, it is necessary to sort out and summarize the research topic in time. According to the discipline classification, we screened papers in cardiovascular field from the Essential Science Indicators (ESI) hot papers published in 2019. Methods such as bibliometrics, statistical description, hierarchical induction, analysis and interpretation were used a step further to reveal the context and characteristics of research in the field of cardiovascular diseases, summarize the latest progress and development direction in this field, and provide information and hints for the expansion of future research directions. A total of 297 papers were finally included, which were mainly in the field of clinical medicine; The country with the most publications was the United States, while China ranked the fifth in terms of contribution; the research institution with the highest number of published papers was Harvard University; the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) has published the most papers, with contribution also from journals such as Circulation, Europe Heart Journal, JAMA, and Lancet. All the papers were categorized into disease burden, disease risk, drug treatment, device treatment and surgical treatment, clinical diagnosis, basic research and others, so as to review and summarize the research front in the field of cardiovascular diseases.