Evaluation of high sensitive troponin in erectile dysfunction.

BACKGROUND: Evidence is accumulating in favour of a link between erectile dysfunction (ED) and coronary artery diseases. We investigated the presence of cardiac injury in patients who have had arteriogenic and nonarteriogenic ED using the hs-Tn levels. METHODS: The diagnosis of ED was based on the International Index of Erectile Function 5-questionnaire (IIF-5) and patients were classified as arteriogenic (A-ED, n = 40), nonarteriogenic (NA-ED, n = 48), and borderline (BL-ED, n = 32) patients in relation to the results of echo-color-Doppler examination of cavernous arteries. The level of hs-TnT and hs-TnI was measured in 120 men with a history of ED of less than one year with no clinical evidence of cardiac ischemic disease. RESULTS: The levels of both hs-TnT and hs-TnI were within the reference range and there was no significant (P > 0.05) difference between patients of the three groups. The hs-CRP values were higher in A-ED men compared with NA-ED (P = 0.048) but not compared with BL-ED (P = 0.136) and negatively correlated with IIF-5 (r = -0.480; P = 0.031). CONCLUSIONS: In ED patients of the three groups the measurement of hs-Tn allows us to exclude the presence of cardiac involvement at least when the history of ED is less than one year and the men are without atherosclerotic risk factors.

Evaluation of the performance of a new OptiScanner™ 5000 system for an intermittent glucose monitoring.

BACKGROUND: Mid-infrared spectral technology has shown a high degree of promise in detecting glucose in plasma. OptiScan Biomedical has developed a glucose monitor based on mid-infrared spectroscopy that withdraws blood samples and measures plasma glucose. The objective of this study was to evaluate the accuracy and performance of the OptiScanner™ 5000 system on different pools of blood. METHODS: This study was performed to validate the blood glucose measurements obtained with the OptiScanner™ 5000 by comparing them to Central Laboratory glucose measurements (VITROS® 5600 Integrated System) as a comparative method across a broad range of glucose values over a three day period to obtain 80-90 paired measurements. RESULTS: A total of 81 paired measurements, distributed between 33 and 320mg/100mL of glucose, were performed. The aggregate data points were within International Organization for Standardization standards, with 100% of the glucose values within ±15%. CONCLUSIONS: The current study suggests that a mid-IR fixed-wavelength system (OptiScanner) can measure glucose accurately across a wide range of glucose values in plasma of ICU patients.