1,720,972 research outputs found
Secondary Prevention of CAD with ACE Inhibitors: A Struggle Between Life and Death of the Endothelium
No full textAngiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors
improve outcomes in patients with coronary artery disease
(CAD), heart failure, and hypertension. This short review
examines clinical evidence for such effects and the
underlying mechanism of action. One potential mode of
action for ACE inhibitors in CAD is blood pressure
reduction. However, recent data suggest that the effects of
ACE inhibitors on the endothelium may also be relevant in
attenuating the progression of atherosclerosis. In CAD,
chronic overexpression of tissue ACE disrupts the angiotensin
II/bradykinin balance with a net result of endothelial
dysfunction, mainly due to an increased rate of apoptosis.
An imbalance between endothelial apoptosis (death) and its
renewal from the bone marrow (life) causes discontinuity of
the endothelial layer, favoring the initiation and progression of
a biochemical sequence that leads to atherosclerosis, plaque
rupture, and eventually acute coronary syndromes. There is
clinical and experimental evidence that ACE inhibition
improves the life and death cycle of the endothelium. By
restoring the bradykinin/angiotensin II balance, ACE inhibition
reduces the rate of endothelial apoptosis and experimental
results suggest that ACE inhibition can also improve the
production and mobilization of endothelial progenitor cells
from bone marrow. We report our experience in this context
with perindopril
Efficacy of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors in secondary prevention
No full textThis paper reports the rationale for the cardiovascular protective effects of angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and reviews the overall results of recent randomized clinical trials. ACE-inhibitors prevent degradation of bradykinin, exert anti-ischemic action, inhibit thrombosis and platelet aggregation, are antiatherogenic, improve endothelial function and vessel remodeling, and have anti-inflammatory properties. Previous trials have shown that ACE-inhibitors reduce cardiovascular events in patients with heart failure or ventricular dysfunction. These findings have recently been extended to patients with lower risk profile, no evidence of heart failure and in secondary prevention using lipophilic ACE-inhibitors with high affinity for tissue ACE, i.e. those most likely to have high antiatherosclerotic efficacy. The central role of long-acting lipophilic ACE-inhibitors for cardiovascular protection has been clearly established and they should now be considered as a routine treatment for secondary prevention in the same way as aspirin, beta-blockers and statins
Oltre la dissincronia quali fattori determinano la risposta alla terapia di resincronizzazione cardiaca?
No full textAlthough cardiac resynchronization therapy is currently used for treatment of refractory heart failure
in patients with low ejection fraction and cardiac dyssynchrony, there is a substantial number of
non-responders. This indicates that, in addition to cardiac dyssynchrony, there are other factors affecting
response to cardiac resynchronization therapy. Pre-implant identification of these factors appears
of crucial importance in order to finalize the resynchronization treatment to those patients who
have the highest probability of a positive response. In this review the main non-dyssynchrony determinants
of response to cardiac resynchronization therapy are presented and discussed
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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