BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Oral anticoagulation is highly effective in reducing stroke and mortality in atrial fibrillation (AF). Several risk stratification schemes have been developed using clinical characteristics. Elevated levels of N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) are important markers of increased mortality and morbidity in congestive heart failure and general community p...

BACKGROUND B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) has been associated with short- and long-term postdischarge prognosis among hospitalized patients with heart failure. It is unknown if admission, discharge, or change from admission to discharge BNP measure is the most important predictor of long-term outcomes. METHODS AND RESULTS We linked patients ≥65 years of age from hospitals in Organized Progr...

There is no diabetes risk model that includes dietary predictors in Asia. We sought to develop a diet-containing noninvasive diabetes risk model in Northern China and to evaluate whether dietary predictors can improve model performance and predictive ability. Cross-sectional data for 9,734 adults aged 20-74 years old were used as the derivation data, and results obtained for a cohort of 4,515 a...

AIMS B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) and C-reactive protein (CRP) predict atrial fibrillation (AF) risk. However, their risk stratification abilities in the broad community remain uncertain. We sought to improve risk stratification for AF using biomarker information. METHODS AND RESULTS We ascertained AF incidence in 18 556 Whites and African Americans from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Commun...

BACKGROUND AND AIM The availability and access of hospital administrative data [coding for Charlson comorbidity index (CCI)] in large data form has resulted in a surge of interest in using this information to predict mortality from stroke. The aims of this study were to determine the minimum clinical data set to be included in models for predicting disability after ischemic stroke adjusting for...

Atiyah and Bott ([AB1],[AB2]) generalized this theorem to complexes of elliptic operators; we briefly recall (under mild restrictions) their theorem. Let E0, E1, · · · , EN be a sequence of smooth hermitian vector bundles over M , equipped with a sequence of first order differential operators Di : Γ(Ei) → Γ(Ei+1). This sequence, denoted Γ(E), is called an elliptic complex if for all i, Di+1Di =...