BACKGROUND-Chronic heart failure (CHF) impairs the endothelium-dependent, flow-mediated dilation (FMD) of small arteries. However, whether chronic angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibition affects the impairment of FMD in CHF is unknown. We investigated the effects of long-term ACE inhibition on the FMD of peripheral arteries in rats with CHF and the mechanism(s) involved. METHODS AND RESU...

BACKGROUND Discordance between small aortic valve area (AVA; < 1.0 cm(2)) and low mean pressure gradient (MPG; < 40 mm Hg) affects a third of patients with moderate or severe aortic stenosis (AS). We hypothesized that this is largely due to inaccurate echocardiographic measurements of the left ventricular outflow tract area (LVOTarea) and stroke volume alongside inconsistencies in recommended t...

BACKGROUND Aortic valve replacement (AVR) remains the gold standard treatment for symptomatic severe aortic stenosis (AS). For the past 10 years, transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) has been applied in patients with high surgical mortality and morbidity risks. The preliminary results of our TAVI patients are presented in this study. METHODS Ten high-risk patients with severe AS, fo...

INTRODUCTION We evaluated the potential preventive effects and mechanisms of intravenously preloaded mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) for erectile dysfunction (ED) in a cavernous nerve (CN) injury model. METHODS Male Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats were used for this study. Rats were randomized into two groups. One group was intravenously preloaded with MSCs (1.0 × 10(6) cells in 1 mL total fluid volum...

Estimation of the pose of an object, or equivalently estimation of a rigid motion, is a prerequisite to many tasks in robotics like perception and manipulation. We want to estimate object poses, consisting of orientation and position of a target object, with 6 degrees of freedom (DOF). We use dual quaternions for the representation of the pose and Mixtures of Projected Gaussians as probability ...

Obesity has been considered as a great public health concern, that spread in both economic and poor resources countries. This study aimed to investigate the effect of Elateriospermum tapos supplementation on male offspring female obesity-induced Sprague Dawley (SD) rats at weaning adult age. A total thirty (30) fifteen (15) (N=45) were purchased for this study. Of 30 rats, six (n=6) randomly se...

Background: The anticipation of a challenging airway can be demanding in emergency care settings. Due to the patient’s clinical condition, executing pre-intubation screening tests during management an situation sometimes troublesome. Ultrasonographic assessment may become helpful tool, but no specific sonographic measurements precisely visualize prospect meeting difficult airway. Therefore, pre...

We present high angular resolution interferometric observations [ ⋆ ] of the dust continuum at 2.7 and 1.3 mm, and of the HC3N (J=12→11) and C 18 O (J=2→1) emission around L1157-mm, a Class 0 object that drives a spectacular molecular outflow. The millimeter dust emission is clearly resolved into two components, a flattened compact source of ∼450×250 AU at 1.3 mm, and mass ∼0.1 M⊙, plus an exte...