Whether changes in renal blood flow (RBF) are associated with and possibly contribute to cystic disease progression in autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) has not been ascertained. The Consortium for Radiologic Imaging Studies of Polycystic Kidney Disease (CRISP) was created to develop imaging techniques and analyses to evaluate progression. A total of 131 participants with ear...

Donors after cardiac death (DCD) could increase the organ pool. Data supports good long-term renal graft survival. However, DCDs are <10% of deceased donors in the United States, due to delayed graft function, and primary nonfunction. These complications are minimized by extracorporeal support after cardiac death (ECS-DCD). This study assesses immediate and acute renal function from different d...

The effectiveness of extending treatment duration as response guided therapy was previously reported for chronic hepatitis C (CHC) genotype 1, but is still controversial for genotype 2. The present study is a retrospective cohort study to investigate the effectiveness of extending treatment duration in therapy with pegylated interferon and ribavirin for patients with CHC genotype 2 by focusing ...

Due to the high risk associated with international transactions, exchange rate forecasting is a challenging and important field in modern time series analysis. The difficulty in forecasting arises from the nonlinearity and non-stationarity inherent in exchange rate dynamics. To address these problems, this study proposes a hybrid model that couples two effective feature extraction techniques, p...

The gradual decreasing capacity of lithium-ion batteries can serve as a health indicator for tracking the degradation of lithium-ion batteries. It is important to predict the capacity of a lithium-ion battery for future cycles to assess its health condition and remaining useful life (RUL). In this paper, a novel method is developed using unscented Kalman filter (UKF) with relevance vector regre...

We used a cell-free, 5% albumin-containing bicarbonate saline solution to perfuse kidneys of salt-sensitive (S) and salt resistant (R) rats derived from Dahl's original strains. The animals had been maintained on diets whose salt content was either 8% ((+)Na) or 0.4% ((-)Na). On these regimens only S(+)Na rats become hypertensive. Glomerular filtration rate (GFR), urinary sodium excretion (NaE)...

Integration of energy systems with information technologies has facilitated the realization of smart energy systems that utilize information to optimize system operation. To that end, crucial in optimizing energy system operation is the accurate, ahead-of-time forecasting of load demand. In particular, load forecasting allows planning of system expansion, and decision making for enhancing syste...

Studies of IL-28B genotype in patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotype 2/3 infection have yielded conflicting results. The aim of this meta-analysis was to obtain a pooled odds ratio (OR) of the impact of IL-28B genotype on achieving sustained virologic response (SVR) in patients with HCV genotype 2/3 infection treated with pegIFN and ribavirin. A meta-analysis with a random effects model...

Renal blood flow (RBF) responses to arginine vasopressin (AVP) were tested in anesthetized wild-type (WT) and CD38(-/-) mice that lack the major calcium-mobilizing second messenger cyclic ADP ribose. AVP (3-25 ng) injected intravenously produced dose-dependent decreases in RBF, reaching a maximum of 25 ± 2% below basal RBF in WT and 27 ± 2% in CD38(-/-) mice with 25 ng of AVP. Renal vascular re...

BACKGROUND & AIMS A combination of pegylated interferon-alpha and ribavirin (PR) is the standard therapy for patients with chronic hepatitis C. The impact of polymorphism of interleukin-28B (IL28B) on sustained virological response (SVR) to PR has been well documented in patients with CHC genotype-1 (GT1), but it is controversial in genotype-2 (GT2) CHC patients. This study investigated the pre...