BACKGROUND Vascular calcification has been recognized as a risk factor for cardiovascular (CV) events in patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD). However, the association of carotid artery calcification (CAAC) with CV events remains unknown. The aim of this study was to elucidate whether CAAC is associated with composite CV events in ESRD patients. METHODS One-hundred thirty-three patien...

BACKGROUND In applications of supervised statistical learning in the biomedical field it is necessary to assess the prediction error of the respective prediction rules. Often, data preparation steps are performed on the dataset-in its entirety-before training/test set based prediction error estimation by cross-validation (CV)-an approach referred to as "incomplete CV". Whether incomplete CV can...

BACKGROUND Screening for Fabry disease (FD) increasingly reveals individuals without characteristic features and with a variant of unknown significance in the α-galactosidase A (GLA) gene. Cornea verticillata (CV) assessment, as a characteristic sign of FD, may be a valuable diagnostic tool to assess whether these individuals have a non-classical phenotype or no FD at all. METHODS We performe...

BACKGROUND Many barriers exist to conducting pediatric cardiovascular (CV) trials, and the majority of therapies used are not evidence based. Recent legislation has aimed to stimulate pediatric research and improve drug labeling. This study describes off-label use of CV medications in children hospitalized with congenital and acquired CV disease. METHODS AND RESULTS The 2005 Pediatric Health ...

OBJECTIVE This study was undertaken to assess the predictive ability of 4 established cardiovascular (CV) risk models for the 10-year risk of fatal and non-fatal CV diseases in European patients with rheumatoid arthritis. METHODS Prospectively collected data from the Nijmegen early rheumatoid arthritis (RA) inception cohort was used. Discriminatory ability for CV risk prediction was estimated...

Heparan sulfate/heparin class of proteoglycans (HSPG) have been shown to function in cellular attachment and infection of numerous viruses including picornaviruses. Coxsackievirus A9 (CV-A9) and human parechovirus 1 (HPeV-1) are integrin-binding members in the family Picornaviridae. CV-A9 Griggs and HPeV-1 Harris (prototype) strains have been reported not to bind to heparin, but it was recently...

There is an emerging consensus that parasitoids are limited by the number of eggs which they can lay as well as the amount of time they can search for their hosts. Since egg limitation tends to destabilize host-parasitoid dynamics, successful control of insect pests by parasitoids requires additional stabilizing mechanisms such as heterogeneity in the distribution of parasitoid attacks and host...

Contingent valuation (CV) has become one of the most widely used non-market valuation techniques. CV’s prominence is due to its flexibility and ability to estimate total value, including passive use value. Its use and the inclusion of passive use value in benefit-cost analyses and environmental litigation are the subject of a contentious debate. This paper discusses key areas of the debate over...

Collective variable (CV) or order parameter based enhanced sampling algorithms have achieved great success due to their ability to efficiently explore the rough potential energy landscapes of complex systems. However, the degeneracy of microscopic configurations, originating from the orthogonal space perpendicular to the CVs, is likely to shadow “hidden barriers” and greatly reduce the efficien...

In Drosophila, the BMP binding protein Short gastrulation (Sog) both enhances and inhibits BMP activity in a spatially dependent manner, likely by facilitating transport of BMPs. In this report we examine the properties of a second Sog-like protein, Crossveinless 2 (Cv-2), and show that like Sog, it is a secreted BMP-binding protein that can either augment or inhibit BMP signaling. Unlike Sog h...