The present survey aims to identify predictors associated with the use of epidural analgesia (EA). Therefore, from October 2007 to June 2008, a survey was conducted in 193 pregnant women (mean age 31.7 years (SD 4.9); 64.8% primipara) attending a German general hospital with a specialisation in integrative medicine. Questionnaires, ...

OBJECTIVES: We compared the association of follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG) with metabolic syndrome (MetS). DESIGN AND METHODS: We examined 320 postmenopausal women (148 with MetS and 172 without MetS). RESULTS: FSH was more strongly associated with MetS probability in the logistic regression model compared to ...

Recent evidence suggests that young men and women may have different strategies for regulating arterial blood pressure, and the purpose of the present study was to determine if sex differences exist in diastolic arterial pressure (DAP) and muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA) relations during simulated orthostatic stress. We hypothesized that ...

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to examine set-shifting, central coherence, and decision making in women currently ill with anorexia nervosa (AN), women recovered from AN, and healthy control women. We aim to test whether these neuropsychological weaknesses persist after recovery, and explore relations between the impairments RESULTS: Compared ...

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is related to risk factors of coronary artery disease, such as dyslipidemia, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome, which are closely linked with visceral adiposity. The aim of this study was to investigate whether NAFLD was associated with coronary artery calcification (CAC), which is used as a ...

Background and purpose:  Vascular risk factors (VRFs) are known to cause cerebral microvascular disease, but evidence supporting an effect of VRFs on regional brain atrophy is mixed. We investigate whether an aggregation of VRFs is associated with volume of hippocampus and entorhinal cortex in elderly people living in the community. ...

ABSTRACT: INTRODUCTION: Livial Intervention Following Breast Cancer; Efficacy, Recurrence and Tolerability Endpoints (LIBERATE - ClinicalTrials.gov number NCT00408863), a randomized, placebo controlled, double-blind trial which demonstrated that tibolone (Livial), a tissue selective hormone replacement therapy (HRT) increased breast cancer (BC) recurrence HR 1.40 (95% CI 1.14-1.70; p=0.001) entered a subgroup of ...

OBJECTIVE: Central obesity is a prerequisite for the diagnosis of metabolic syndrome (MetS). Precise measurement of visceral fat by bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) has been validated. The aim of this study was to investigate the diagnostic performance of BIA in MetS and validate the best cutoff in a large adult ...

Aim: Recent researches have shown that myeloperoxidase (MPO) is a potential inflammatory risk factor for coronary heart disease (CHD). In the present study, the possible associations of MPO with acute coronary syndrome (ACS), low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and other risk factors in CHD patients were investigated.Methods: Five hundred thirty-six ...

BACKGROUND: The benefit of statin use on total cholesterol (TC) concentration has not been studied previously in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). OBJECTIVE: Our study aimed to evaluate statin-associated TC-concentration reduction and subsequent risk for cardiovascular (CV) morbidity and mortality in COPD. METHODS: We performed a population-based cohort ...

AIMS: A large proportion of ischemic cardiovascular disease occur in people without hypercholesterolemia. We aimed to investigate whether risk factors other than low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) have different impacts on cardiovascular risk in people with low verses high LDL-C levels. METHODS: A total of 30,378 participants (35-64 years) were followed ...

OBJECTIVES: To investigate which anthropometric adiposity measure has the strongest association with cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors in Caucasian men and women without a history of CVD. DESIGN: Systematic review and meta-analysis. METHODS: We searched databases for studies reporting correlations between anthropometric adiposity measures and CVD risk factors in Caucasian ...

Purpose: Our aim was to determine the influence of waist circumference on the repartition of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) subfractions in patients with increased waist perimeter and one or more cardiovascular risk factor.Methods: All 117 patients without lipid-lowering therapy underwent routine clinical, biological evaluation and isolation of ...

BACKGROUND: The prevalence of coronary artery calcification (CAC) in Japanese men is lower than in white and Japanese-American men. It is unclear if aortic calcification (AC) strongly linked to smoking is also lower in Japanese men who have many times higher smoking prevalence compared to US men. METHODS: We conducted ...

BACKGROUND: Overweight and obesity are an important public health problem in society, due to their association with various chronic diseases. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to determine the prevalence and distribution of overweight and obesity, using different anthropometric measurements and to identify the best anthropometric indicator which is ...

OBJECTIVES: Leukoaraiosis is associated with cerebrovascular microangiopathy. Increasing evidence suggests that bilirubin is a potent cytoprotectant in the development of cardiovascular diseases. This study aimed to determine whether total bilirubin is related to leukoaraiosis. METHODS: We examined the relationship of total bilirubin with leukoaraiosis in 1331 Korean adults. The odds ...

BACKGROUND: Whether intakes of dietary fat and cholesterol are associated with risk of stroke remain unclear. We examined the associations between intakes of total fat, specific types of fat, and cholesterol and risk of stroke in a prospective cohort of women. METHODS: The study population consisted of 34,670 women, aged ...

PurposeTo elucidate the association between macular pigment optical density (MPOD) and various types of obesity in the South-Indian population.Patients and methodsIn total, 300 eyes of 161 healthy volunteers of South-Indian origin were studied. MPOD was measured psychophysically at 0.25°, 0.50°, 1.00°, and 1.75° eccentricities from fovea. Anthropometric measurements included waist ...

The traditional Mediterranean diet (MedDiet) is now widely recommended in the prevention of CVD. However, it is not known whether the MedDiet has the same beneficial cardiovascular effects in women and in men. The objective of the present study was to investigate sex-related differences with regard to changes in cardiometabolic ...

The aim of this paper is to review and discuss current methods of risk stratification for cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention, emerging biomarkers, and imaging techniques, and their relative merits and limitations. This report is based on discussions that took place among experts in the area during a special CardioVascular Clinical ...

Although there is great interest in the notion that dysfunctional transformation of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) facilitates development of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease (CVD), few studies in human populations directly address this issue. As apolipoprotein E (apoE) is a constituent of HDL thought to be important for HDL antiatherogenic function, we ...

OBJECTIVE: The goal of this study was to investigate the extent to which socioeconomic status (SES) in young adults is associated with cardiovascular risk factor levels and carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) and their changes over a 6-year follow-up period. METHODS AND RESULTS: The study population included 1813 subjects participating in ...

The ultimate goal is to identify and target modifiable risk factors that will reduce major cardiovascular events in African American lupus patients. As a first step toward achieving this goal, this study was designed to explore risk factor models of preclinical atherosclerosis in a predominantly African American group of patients ...

AIMS: To investigate the prevalence of undiagnosed diabetes mellitus (DM) and cardiovascular risk factors among professional drivers in Hong Kong. METHODS: Chinese professional drivers with no history of DM were invited to complete a questionnaire on their health status, followed by taking their body measurements, fasting blood glucose (FG) and ...

AIMS: Cardiovascular disease is the main cause of morbidity and mortality in type 2 diabetes (T2DM), at huge cost to the NHS. We investigated the potential effect on population cardiovascular risk and associated costs of single and multi-factorial intervention, to target levels, in individuals with T2DM. METHODS: Baseline population means ...

The present study sought to evaluate the relation between cardiovascular risk factors and cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) in a large population. Low CRF has been associated with increased total mortality and cardiovascular mortality. The mechanisms underlying greater cardiovascular mortality have not yet been determined. A series of cardiovascular risk factors were ...

PURPOSE: To examine the effect of correcting coronary heart disease (CHD) risk factors for long-term within-person variation on CHD risk. METHODS: By using 5533 men and 7301 women from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study, we compared models incorporating risk factors measured at a single visit and models incorporating ...

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the contribution of biomarkers of glucose homeostasis (adiponectin, glucose, glycated albumin, and insulin levels) and inflammation (high-sensitivity C-reactive protein and lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A(2) levels) to the risk of developing Alzheimer disease (AD) and all-cause dementia. DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. SETTING: Dementia-free Framingham Heart Study participants had sera ...

LaVela SL, Evans CT, Prohaska TR, Miskevics S, Ganesh SP, Weaver FM. Males aging with a spinal cord injury: prevalence of cardiovascular and metabolic conditions. To compare the prevalence of cardiovascular and metabolic conditions in male veterans aging with spinal cord injury (SCI) with that of older men comparison groups. ...

Cardiovascular disease is the major cause of death in patients with renal insufficiency, accounting for 50% of all deaths in renal replacement therapy patients. Mortality from cardiovascular diseases in these patients is approximately 9% per year, which is about 30 times the risk in the general population. So far, intensive ...

Objective Trends in diabetes and cardiovascular mortality rates are considerably different between women and men; this can be partially explained by differences in diabetes control. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to assess whether sex differences exist in effective control of cardiovascular risk factors among persons with type 2 ...

Liver attenuation (LA) [Hounsfield Units (HU)] by computed tomography is a validated quantitative measure that is inversely related to liver fat burden. We examined race and sex differences on the distribution of LA [one of the first stages of fatty liver disease (FLD)] and the predictors of these mean differences ...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The association between adiposity measures and dyslipidemia has seldom been assessed in a multipopulational setting. METHODS AND RESULTS: 27 populations from Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Canada (WHO MONICA project) using health surveys conducted between 1990 and 1997 in adults aged 35-64 years (n = 40,480). Dyslipidemia was defined ...

Individuals with schizophrenia have high levels of medical comorbidity and cardiovascular risk factors. The presence of 3 or more specific factors is indicative of metabolic syndrome, which is a significant influence upon future morbidity and mortality. We aimed to clarify the prevalence and predictors of metabolic syndrome (MetS) in adults ...

The relationship between overt hypothyroidism and cardiovascular risk has been well documented and some data also suggest an association between cardiovascular risk and subclinical hypothyroidism. The aim of our study was to investigate, in a large cohort of euthyroid women, the association of thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) within the normal ...

Rett syndrome (RTT) is a neurodevelopmental disability characterized by mutations in the X-linked methyl-CpG-binding protein 2 (MeCP2) located at the Xq28 region. The severity is modified in part by X chromosomal inactivation resulting in wide clinical variability. We hypothesized that the ability to perform the activities of daily living (ADL) ...

Acromegaly is a syndrome that results when the pituitary gland produces excess growth hormone after epiphyseal closure at puberty. Usually, subjects with acromegaly exhibit a 2- to 3-fold higher mortality rate from diseases that are associated with cardiovascular complications when compared to the normal population. In this study, we therefore ...

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: During the past three decades in Bangladesh, millions of tubewells have been installed to reduce the prevalence of diarrheal disease. This study evaluates the impacts of tubewell access and tubewell depth on childhood diarrhea in rural Bangladesh. METHODS: A total of 59,796 cases of diarrhea in children under ...

AimsIncreasing evidence supports a role for inflammation in promoting atrial fibrillation (AF) and statins have anti-inflammatory effects that may be relevant for the prevention of AF. However, studies of statin therapy and incident AF have yielded mixed results and not focused on individuals with an underlying pro-inflammatory response. We studied ...

This study aimed to examine the control of cardiovascular risk factors among the ethnic groups with type 2 diabetes in Malaysia. The authors analyzed the data of 70092 adults from the Malaysian diabetes registry database. Malays had the worst achievement of target for most of the risk factors. Indians had ...

BACKGROUND: rs2943634 C/A single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), located in a non coding region of chromosome 2q36.3, has been associated with coronary artery disease in two genome wide association studies. Our goal was to investigate its relation with myocardial infarction (MI) and ischemic stroke (IS), as well as with 12 intermediate ...

BACKGROUND: Obesity-associated hyperlipidemia and hyperlipoproteinemia are risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD). Recently, ceramide-derived sphingolipids were identified as a novel independent CVD risk factor. We hypothesized that the beneficial effect of Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB) on CVD risk is related to ceramide-mediated improvement in lipoprotein profile. METHODS: A prospective study ...

This study was conducted to evaluate the association of single serum total cholesterol (TC) measurement with cardiovascular diseases (CVD) deaths in Korean adults. The study subjects were taken from the multi-site collaborative dynamic prospective cohort for epidemiologic investigation on cancer risk in residents nearby nuclear power plants in Korea. A ...

Background: Population allele frequencies of apolipoprotein E (APOE) vary by geographic region. The purpose of this study is to summarize and evaluate published estimates for the prevalence of APOE e4 carrier status among the population diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease (AD) by geographic region and country. Methods: A systematic review of ...

Eating frequency may be important in the development of overweight and obesity and other cardiometabolic risk factors; however, the evidence is inconsistent. The aim of the present study was to examine the associations between the number of eating occasions and cardiometabolic risk factors in a national population-based sample of young ...

Traditional risk factors for premature cardiovascular disease such as systemic hypertension and hypercholesterolemia, all described more than half a century ago, are relatively few in number. Efforts to expand the epidemiological canon have met with limited success due to the high hurdle of causality. Fortunately, another solution to current deficiencies ...

Introduction:  Echolucent plaques are related to a higher cardiovascular risk. Studies to investigate the relationship between echolucency and cardiovascular risk in the early stages of atherosclerosis are limited. We studied the relationship between cardiovascular risk factors and echolucency of the carotid intima-media in low-risk individuals. Methods:  Data were analysed from ...

BACKGROUND: The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the largest federal nutrition assistance program. In recent years, SNAP participation rates increased during times of economic hardship. OBJECTIVE: We examined whether household SNAP participation was associated with adiposity and metabolic risk factors in a representative sample of low-income US adults. DESIGN: ...

OBJECTIVE:Lacunar infarctions are mainly due to 2 microvascular pathologies: lipohyalinosis and microatheroma. Little is known about risk factor differences for these subtypes. We hypothesized that diabetes and glycated hemoglobin (HbA(1)c) would be related preferentially to the lipohyalinotic subtype. METHODS:We performed a cross-section analysis of the brain MRI data from 1,827 ...

BACKGROUND: Height is inversely associated with incident coronary disease and total stroke, but few studies have examined the association between height and intraparenchymal hemorrhage (IPH). We hypothesized that height would be inversely associated with incident IPH in the combined cohorts of the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study and the Cardiovascular Health ...