Internal and emergency medicine
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Assessment of E/A ratio helps emergency clinicians in the management of patients with acute dyspnea.
Acute dyspnea (AD) is one of the main reasons for admission to the Emergency Department (ED). In the last years integrated ultrasound examination (IUE) of lung, heart and inferior vena cava (IVC) has become an extension of clinical examination for a fast differential diagnosis. The aim of present study is to assess the feasibility and diagnostic accuracy of E/A ratio for diagnosing acute heart failure (aHF) in patients with acute dyspnea. ⋯ However, the highest accuracy was obtained by diastolic function parameters. The E/A ratio showed the highest diagnostic performance with an AUC for aHF of 0.93. In patients presenting with AD, E/A ratio is easy to obtain in a fast ultrasound protocol and showed an excellent accuracy for diagnosis of aHF.
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Age-related cognitive impairment can occur many years before the onset of the clinical symptoms of dementia. Uric acid (UA), a metabolite of purine-rich foods, has been shown to be positively associated with improved cognitive function, but such association remains controversial. Moreover, most of the previous studies investigating the association included elderly participants with memory-related diseases. ⋯ Adjusted multivariable linear regression analyses showed that higher sUA is associated with poorer performance on the visual memory domain of cognitive function (β = - 6.87, 95% CI - 11.65 to - 2.10, P = 0.005), but not on the speed of reaction domain (β = - 55.16, 95% CI - 190.63 to 80.30, P = 0.424). Our findings support previous studies suggesting an inverse association between high sUA levels and cognitive function in elderly and extend the evidence for such a role to middle-aged participants. Further prospective studies are warranted to investigate the relationship between UA and cognition.
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The lack of a highly sensitive method to evaluate paraquat (PQ)-induced pulmonary fibrosis and predict disease progression remains an unresolved clinic issue. Fibroblast activation protein (FAP) may play an important role in the pathogenesis of PQ-induced pulmonary fibrosis. We aimed to evaluate the role of FAP in the PQ-induced pulmonary fibrosis and the utility of fibroblast activation protein inhibitor (FAPI) for positron emission tomography (PET) imaging in PQ-induced pulmonary fibrosis. ⋯ Lung tissues of mice were collected for fibrosis assessment after imaging. Immunohistochemistry for FAP, histology and Western blot for collagen were performed to further validate the imaging findings. In conclusion, FAPI was involved in the pathogenesis of fibrosis induced by PQ, and PET/CT with FAPI could detect lung fibrogenesis, making it a promising tool to assess early disease activity and predict disease progression.