An Aging Clock Derived from Images of the Lens of the Eye
In this study, we used informative lens photographs to generate LensAge as an innovative indicator to reveal aging status of lens based on deep learning (DL) models. Under ideal physiological conditions (both genetic and environmental), biological age should be synchronized with chronological age. While in reality, there are almost always differences between biological age and chronological age, which is considered to result from individually different aging processes. Therefore, we measured the difference between LensAge and chronological age as the LensAge index to assess an individual's aging rate relative to peers, and...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 22, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Which patient has the more severe chest pain?
ConclusionOnly a weak association between pre-hospital chest pain severity and markers of myocardial injury was identified, supporting more judicious use of opioid analgesia with a focus on patient comfort.___________This article shows that pain intensity is associated with shorter door to balloon times and thus smaller infarcts. Having severe pain drives people to the ED for faster treatment! It is good to have terrible pain! And as we have shown before, morphine leads to slower times to treatment and worse outcomes.Chest Pain Severity Rating Is a Poor Predictive Tool in the Diagnosis of ST-Seg...
Source: Dr. Smith's ECG Blog - September 26, 2023 Category: Cardiology Authors: Steve Smith Source Type: blogs
Four reasons to question “new generation” monoclonal antibody Alzheimer’s drugs such as aducanumab (Aduhelm), lecanemab (Leqembi), donanemab
New Alzheimer’s Drugs Don’t Deserve the Hype (Being Patient):
A prominent childhood memory is of my grandparents living with and then dying from dementia. As is universal with dementia, there was a double blow: watching my grandparents lose their identity and seeing the suffering of those closest to them.
… Enter three drugs, tentatively FDA-approved aducanumab (Aduhelm); fully FDA-approved lecanemab (Leqembi); and donanemab … currently in clinical trials and soon to be considered for FDA approval) that remove amyloid, the protein thought to cause Alzheimer’s disease… But how useful are these drugs going t...
Source: SharpBrains - September 25, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: SharpBrains Tags: Brain/ Mental Health aducanumab Aduhelm Alzheimer's drugs brain bleeding brain swelling dementia donanemab hype lecanemab Leqembi monoclonal antibody Alzheimer's drugs MRI-scans Source Type: blogs
Evaluation of Prosthetic Aortic Valve Obstruction
This discussion will focus beyond the basic clinical evaluation, ECG, chest X-ray and hematological workup. Hematological workup is important in aortic valve obstruction because of likelihood of associated hemolytic anemia and acquired von Willebrand Syndrome. Former is due to destruction of red blood cells across the narrowed aortic valve, and latter due to loss of the largest multimers of von Willebrand factor. High shear stress across the narrowed aortic valve exposes a region of the von Willebrand factor which is susceptible to a specific von Willebrand protease. This can lead on to gastrointestinal angiodysplasia (He...
Source: Cardiophile MD - August 9, 2023 Category: Cardiology Authors: Johnson Francis Tags: General Cardiology Source Type: blogs
Stress Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Imaging for Stable Chest Pain
Stress cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging is not as commonly used for evaluation of persons with stable chest pain as other modalities of non-invasive evaluation. Ricci and colleageus have reported a systematic review and meta-analysis on this aspect in JAMA Cardiology [1]. They evaluated 33 diagnostic studies including 7814 persons and 31 prognostic studies including 67,080 persons. The included studies were between 2002 and 2021.
The authors concluded that stress CMR had high diagnostic accuracy and had robust prognostication, especially when 3 Tesla MRI scanners were used. Myocardial ischemia and late gadoliniu...
Source: Cardiophile MD - June 12, 2023 Category: Cardiology Authors: Johnson Francis Tags: General Cardiology Source Type: blogs
Localisation of Ventricular Tachycardia by Surface ECG
Surface ECG can be used to identify the site of origin of ventricular tachycardia. QRS morphologic patterns and vectors are helpful in discerning the activation pattern of the myocardium. Chest wall deformity as well as metabolic and drug effects can cause limitations in analysis sometimes [1]. Identification of site of origin of VT is useful while planning catheter ablation. It is also useful in correlating with the clinical situation as in post myocardial infarction scar related VT. Another instance is for correlation with findings on imaging modalities like echocardiography and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging [2].
F...
Source: Cardiophile MD - April 23, 2023 Category: Cardiology Authors: Johnson Francis Tags: General Cardiology Source Type: blogs
Regional wall motion abnormalities in LAD territory on echocardiography.
Echocardiography is one of the simplest investigations to assess the myocardial regional wall motion abnormalities in coronary artery disease. Regional wall motion abnormalities can also be assessed by nuclear imaging and cine CT (computed tomography) scan / MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). The wall motion is scored from 1 to 4 depending on whether it is normal wall motion, hypokinesia, akinesia or dyskinesia. Hypokinesia means reduced contraction, akinesia means absence of contraction and dyskinesia means bulging out in systole. In order to standardize the reporting of wall motion abnormalities, American Society of Echo...
Source: Cardiophile MD - February 2, 2023 Category: Cardiology Authors: Johnson Francis Tags: Echocardiography General Cardiology Source Type: blogs
Ballroom dancing can reduce aging-related brain atrophy in the hippocampus (and, more than treadmill walking!)
Social ballroom dancing can improve cognitive functions and reduce brain atrophy in older adults who are at increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. That’s the key finding of my team’s recently published study in the Journal of Aging and Physical Activity.
In our study, we enrolled 25 adults over 65 years of age in either six months of twice-weekly ballroom dancing classes or six months of twice-weekly treadmill walking classes. None of them were engaged in formal dancing or other exercise programs.
The overall goal was to see how each experience affected cognitive function and brain health...
Source: SharpBrains - January 11, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Conversation Tags: Brain/ Mental Health Alzheimer’s Disease brain health Brain-atrophy cognition cognitive-function dancing dementia executive functioning hippocampus older-adults processing-speed social ballroom Source Type: blogs
Thrombus, tumor or vegetation?
This question is often faced by the echocardiographer while evaluating a mass detected on the heart valves or cardiac chambers. Usual method is to take it in the clinical context. There could also be non-infective vegetations of marantic endocarditis which are almost impossible to differentiate from infective vegetations. Marantic vegetations can be suspected in the presence of small and multiple vegetations changing from one examination to another, without associated abscess or valve destruction [1]. It may be noted that echocardiography is neither 100% specific nor 100% sensitive for the diagnosis of infective endocardi...
Source: Cardiophile MD - December 15, 2022 Category: Cardiology Authors: Johnson Francis Tags: General Cardiology Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, December 12th 2022
In conclusion, selective removal of senescent dermal fibroblasts can improve the skin aging phenotype, indicating that BPTES may be an effective novel therapeutic agent for skin aging.
Non-Dividing Neurons Do In Fact Become Senescent, Impairing Brain Function
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2022/12/non-dividing-neurons-do-in-fact-become-senescent-impairing-brain-function/
Cellular senescence is generally thought of as a characteristic of replicating cells; it is an end state reached when telomeres, reduced in length with each cell division, become too short. This is followed by programmed cell death...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 11, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Carotid Artery Stiffness Correlates with Age-Related Damage and Dysfunction in the Brain
We examined the associations of carotid artery stiffness with cerebral small-vessel disease markers, cognition, and dementia subtypes in a memory clinic cohort. A total of 272 participants underwent carotid ultrasonography, brain magnetic resonance imaging, and neuropsychological assessment. Carotid ultrasonography was used to assess β-index, pressure-strain elastic modulus, and pulse-wave velocity-β.
Brain magnetic resonance images were graded for cerebral small-vessel disease markers, including white matter hyperintensities, lacunes, and cerebral microbleeds. Participants were classified as having no cognitive i...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 9, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Importance of cardiac imaging in patients with ventricular tachycardia
Late gadolinium enhancement on cardiac magnetic resonance imaging identifies scars likely to cause reentrant ventricular tachycardia. Ischemic scars are predominantly subendocardial while post inflammatory scars are predominantly sub epicardial. Scar in dilated cardiomyopathy is located in the mid wall region.
Imaging data is thus useful in deciding on the access (endocardial or epicardial approach) for ablation of ventricular tachycardia. Imaging will also tell us whether there is pericardial calcification which may interfere with catheter navigation in pericardial space in case of epicardial ablation. Similarly presence...
Source: Cardiophile MD - November 27, 2022 Category: Cardiology Authors: Johnson Francis Tags: General Cardiology Source Type: blogs
Post doctoral and doctoral opportunities at Basque Center on Cognition Brain and Language (San Sebasti án, Basque Country, Spain)
FUNDED POSTDOCTORAL CANDIDATE POSITION – Signal Processing in Neuroimaging group at the BCBL- Basque Center on Cognition Brain and Language (San Sebasti án, Basque Country, Spain) www.bcbl.euINFORMATION ABOUT THE POSITION Position: PostdoctoralResearcher Profile: R2, Recognised Researcher (PhD holders or equivalent who are not yet fully independent) / R3, Established Researcher(Researchers who have developed a level of independence)Number of vacancies: 1Project: OpenLocation: Spain> Donostia-San SebastianResearch Field: Cognitive NeuroscienceJob Statu...
Source: Talking Brains - November 9, 2022 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
What is an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD)? Cardiology Basics
Implantable cardioverter defibrillator or ICD is a cardiac implantable electronic device or CIED. The device is implanted subcutaneously under local anaesthesia, usually below the left clavicle. The electrodes from the device are introduced into the right sided cardiac chambers through a subclavian vein puncture. The ICD senses and analyzes heart rhythm continuously. It can detect life threatening ventricular arrhythmias and treat them electrically.
If a ventricular tachycardia is detected, the ICD tries to overdrive it by fast pacing. If it does not suppress the ventricular tachycardia, the ICD delivers a shock through i...
Source: Cardiophile MD - October 23, 2022 Category: Cardiology Authors: Johnson Francis Tags: General Cardiology Source Type: blogs
What are the types of myocardial infarction? Cardiology Basics
World Heart Federation along with major European and North American Heart Societies have brought forth the universal definition of myocardial infarction. It has been revised the fourth time in 2018. In the latest revision myocardial infarction has been classified into 5 types, of which type 4 has three subtypes as well.
Type 1 is the type of myocardial infarction which all of us are familiar with. It occurs due to sudden occlusion of a coronary artery. This leads to chest pain and ECG changes. Myocardial damage can be noted on echocardiography as well as other imaging modalities like cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CM...
Source: Cardiophile MD - October 13, 2022 Category: Cardiology Authors: Johnson Francis Tags: General Cardiology Source Type: blogs
