Relationship between lipids levels and right ventricular volume overload in congestive heart failure.

BACKGROUND: The relationship between lipids and coronary artery disease has been well established. However, this is not the case between lipids and heart failure. Ironically, high lipid levels are associated with better outcomes in heart failure, but the mechanisms underlying the phenomenon are not fully understood. This study was performed to test the hypothesis that reduced intestinal lipid absorption due to venous congestion may lead to low lipid levels. METHODS: We collected data of clinical characteristics, echocardiograph, and lipid profile in 442 unselected patients with congestive heart failure. Correlations between lipid levels [including total cholesterol (TCL), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), and triglycerides (TG)] and right ventricle end diastolic diameter (RVEDD), left ventricle end diastolic diameter (LVEDD), right atrium diameter (RA), left atrium diameter (LA), or left ventricle ejection fraction (LVEF) were analyzed using Pearson correlation and partial correlation. RVEDD, LVEDD, RA, and LA were indexed to the body surface area. RESULTS: There was a significantly inverse correlation between TCL levels and RVEDD (r = -0.34, P < 0.001) and RA (r = -0.36, P < 0.001). Other lipids such as LDL-C, HDL-C, and TG had a similar inverse correlation with RVEDD and RA. All these correlations remained unchanged after adjusting for age, gender, smoking status, physical activity levels, comorbidities, and medication use. CONCLUSIONS: Lipid levels were inversely correlated to RVEDD in patients with congestive heart failure; however, because this was an observational study, further investigation is needed to verify our results as well as identify a causal relationship, if any.

Serum uric acid as an index of impaired renal function in congestive heart failure.

BACKGROUND: Hyperuricemia is frequently present in patients with heart failure. Many pathological conditions, such as tissue ischemia, renal function impairment, cardiac function impairment, metabolic syndrome, and inflammatory status, may impact uric acid (UA) metabolism. This study was to assess their potential relations to UA metabolism in heart failure. METHODS: We retrospectively assessed clinical characteristics, echocardiological, renal, metabolic and inflammatory variables selected on the basis of previous evidence of their involvement in cardiovascular diseases and UA metabolism in a large cohort of randomly selected adults with congestive heart failure (n = 553). By clustering of indices, those variables were explored using factor analysis. RESULTS: In factor analysis, serum uric acid (SUA) formed part of a principal cluster of renal functional variables which included serum creatinine (SCr) and blood urea nitrogen (BUN). Univariate correlation coefficients between variables of patients with congestive heart failure showed that the strongest correlations for SUA were with BUN (r = 0.48, P < 0.001) and SCr (r = 0.47, P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: There was an inverse relationship between SUA levels and measures of renal function in patients with congestive heart failure. The strong correlation between SUA and SCr and BUN levels suggests that elevated SUA concentrations reflect an impairment of renal function in heart failure.

Transgenic wheat progeny resistant to powdery mildew generated by Agrobacterium inoculum to the basal portion of wheat seedling.

To improve the transformation efficiency of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) mediated by Agrobacterium tumefaciens, we explored the possibility of employing the basal portion of wheat seedling (shoot apical meristem) as the explants. Three genotypes of wheat were transformed by A. tumefaciens carrying beta-1, 3-glucanase gene. After vernalization, the seeds to be transformed were germinated. When these seedlings grew up to 2 approximately 5 cm, their coleoptile and half of the cotyledon were cut out, and the basal portions were infected by A. tumefaciens. A total 27 T(0) transgenic plants were obtained, and the average transformation efficiency was as high as 9.82%. Evident segregation occurred in some of the T(1) plants, as was indicated by PCR and Southern blotting analysis. Investigation of the T(2) plants revealed that some transformed plants had higher resistance to powdery mildew than the controls. Northern blotting revealed that beta-1, 3-glucanase gene was normally expressed in the T(2) plants, which showed an increased resistance to powdery mildew. The results above indicate that the exogenous gene has been successfully integrated into the genome of wheat, transmitted and expressed in the transgenic progeny. From all the results above, it can be concluded that Agrobacterium inoculum to the basal portion of wheat seedling is a highly efficient and dependable transformation method. It can be developed into a practicable method for transfer of target gene into wheat.

[Research advances on the mechanism of RNA silencing in plants].

RNA silencing is a supervising mechanism in eukaryote which can prevent virus duplication, repress transposition of transposon and regulate gene expression. Compared with that in animals, RNA silencing in plants shows some differences in the function of RdRP, in bi-directional transitive RNAi, and in systemic propagation, etc. Meanwhile,the endogenous small RNAs in plants are more diverse than those in animals. In this paper, it is reviewed of the mechanism of RNA silencing in plants and the possibility of its use in plant functional Genomics.