Kernfinley6673

Cardiovascular complications remain the main cause of mortality and morbidity in diabetes. This is related to advanced vascular pathology in this population, together with an enhanced thrombotic environment. The increased risk in thrombosis is secondary to platelet hyper-reactivity and increased levels and/or altered activity of coagulation factors. The current review is focused on the role of antiplatelet agents in modulating the thrombotic milieu in diabetes and improving vascular outcome in this high-risk population. We review the latest evidence for the use of aspirin in primary vascular prevention together with long-term treatment with this agent for secondary prevention. Hexamethonium Dibromide clinical trial We also discuss the effects of the various P2Y12 inhibitors, including clopidogrel, prasugrel and ticagrelor, on both short- and long-term secondary vascular prevention. Moreover, we briefly review antiplatelet therapies in special groups of people including those intolerant to aspirin, individuals with peripheral vascular disease and those with cerebrovascular pathology. The overall aim of this review is to provide the healthcare professional with a pragmatic guide for the management of thrombotic risk using established antiplatelet therapies to improve vascular outcome in persons with diabetes. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.Statin use has been associated with reduced cancer-specific mortality among patients with several cancer types, including multiple myeloma (MM). We aimed to further elucidate the association of statin use and dose intensity with MM survival. Using Swedish population-based national health registers, we identified all incident MM diagnoses occurring January 1, 2007 to December 31, 2013 and their drug dispensations and comorbidities. We assessed statin exposure in 6-month periods pre- and post-diagnosis, treated diagnosis as baseline for calculating survival time, and calculated hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) of exposure-related MM-specific and all-cause mortality using Cox regression. We assessed statin exposure during the entire follow-up and risk of MM-specific mortality in a nested case-control analysis. We classified dose intensity according to American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association recommendations. We ascertained 4315 MM cases during follow-up. Statin use was associated with reduced MM-specific mortality (pre-diagnosis use multivariate-adjusted HR, 95% CI 0.83, 0.71-0.96; 6 months post-diagnosis 0.73, 0.60-0.89; entire follow-up 0.65, 0.52-0.80) and (more weakly) with all-cause mortality. Intensity analyses suggested a dose-response; MM-specific mortality decreased with increasing statin intensity in all time windows (eg, 6 months post-diagnosis low [0.76 (0.56-1.03)], medium [0.73 (0.58-0.92)], high [0.33 (0.08-1.32)] intensity). However, relatively few patients received high intensity treatment, and the trend was statistically significant only for unadjusted pre-diagnosis use. In this large population-based MM cohort, statin use was associated with improved MM-specific survival in both sexes. Randomized prospective studies are warranted to evaluate statins as adjuvant treatment in MM. © 2020 The Authors. American Journal of Hematology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.BACKGROUND Serum protein electrophoresis (SPE) is a widely used laboratory technique to diagnose patients with multiple myeloma (MM) and other disorders related to serum protein. In patients with MM, abnormal monoclonal protein can be detected by SPE and further characterized using immunofixation electrophoresis (IFE). There are several semi-automated agarose gel-based systems available commercially for SPE and IFE. In this study, we sought to evaluate the analytical performance of fully automated EasyFix G26 (EFG26) and semi-automated HYDRASYS 2 SCAN (H2SCAN) for both SPE and IFE. METHODS Both instruments were operated according to manufacturer's instructions. Samples used include a commercially available normal control serum (NCS) and patients' specimens. The following were evaluated precision and comparison studies for SPE, and reproducibility and comparison studies for IFE. Statistical analyses were performed using Microsoft Excel. RESULTS For SPE repeatability study, our results showed that EFG26 has higher coefficient of variation (%CV) compared with H2SCAN for both samples except for monoclonal component with %CV of 0.97% and 1.18%, respectively. Similar results were obtained for SPE reproducibility study except for alpha-1 (4.16%) and beta (3.13%) fractions for NCS, and beta fractions (5.36%) for monoclonal sample. Subsequently, reproducibility for IFE was 100% for both instruments. Values for correlation coefficients between both instruments ranged from 0.91 to 0.98 for the five classic bands. CONCLUSION Both instruments demonstrated good analytical performance characterized by high precision, reproducibility and correlation. © 2020 The Authors. Journal of Clinical Laboratory Analysis published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.In Focus Reneerkens, J., Versluijs, T. S. L., Piersma, T., Alves, J. A., Boorman, M., Corse, C., … Lok, T. (2020). Low fitness at low latitudes wintering in the tropics increases migratory delays and mortality rates in an Arctic breeding shorebird. Journal of Animal Ecology, 89, 691-703. A central question in migratory ecology has been to understand the fitness consequences of individual variation in migration distance among different species and populations. Reneerkens et al. (2020) investigated the demographic consequences of long-distance migration for Sanderlings Calidris alba, an Arctic-breeding species of sandpiper. Their study population has a remarkable geographic distribution with a breeding range that is concentrated in northeast Greenland and Ellesmere Island, Canada but a nonbreeding range that extends across 85° of latitude from Scotland to Namibia. The authors report on unexpected patterns of latitudinal variation in three demographic parameters timing of passage on northward migration, probabilat leads to many additional questions. The new findings have broader implications for theoretical models of migration, and for understanding how different patterns of movements may arise or be maintained in migratory species. © 2020 The Authors. Journal of Animal Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society.