Impact of previous cardiac function status assessed by echocardiography on the outcome of COVID-19.

More than 91,000 fatalities due to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) have occurred in Spain. Several factors are associated with increased mortality in this disease, including cardiovascular risk factors (CVRF). However, information on the cardiac function of patients prior to the onset of COVID-19 is scarce and the potential impact it may have is uncertain. The aim of the EchoVID study was to describe the potential association between CVRF and cardiac function status prior to SARS-CoV-2 infection and in-hospital mortality. We studied clinical characteristics and cardiac function of patients admitted during the first wave of COVID-19. All patients had a transthoracic echocardiogram performed in the previous 12 months prior to diagnosis; conventional systolic and diastolic function parameters were analyzed. Logistic regression analysis was performed to identify predictors of in-hospital mortality. We included 296 individuals. Median age was higher in the group of patients who died (81.0 vs 76.1 years; p = 0.007). No significant differences were found in CVRF. Survivors were more frequently receiving anticoagulation therapy (52.9% vs 70.8%; p = 0.003). LVEF, although preserved on average in both groups, was significantly lower in the group of deceased patients (56.9% vs 61.1%; p = 0.017). Average E/e' ratio was higher in the deceased group (11.1 vs 10.1; p = 0.049). Five variables were found to be independently associated with in-hospital mortality due to COVID-19: Age, male gender, LVEF, E/e' ratio and anticoagulation therapy. A model including these variables had an area under the ROC curve of 0.756 (CI 0.669-0.843). The echocardiographic variables included in the model significantly improved the discriminative power, compared to a model including only demographic data. Left ventricular ejection fraction and E/e' ratio prior to SARS-CoV-2 infection are two easily-obtained echocardiographic parameters that provide additional prognostic information over clinical factors when assessing patients admitted for SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Teaching children to create metaphorical expressions

Metaphorical language is a type of non-literal language with multiple uses in communication. Despite its relevance, most studies about this topic have focused on measuring the performance of a variety of populations on this skill and relating it to biological substrates or other cognitive abilities and there are little or no published studies on procedures for training the creation of metaphorical expressions. The current study evaluated a multiple exemplar training procedure for training simple metaphorical expressions in 4 six-year-old participants. Results demonstrated that all participants acquired the skill and demonstrated generalization, suggesting that multiple exemplar training may be effective for teaching children to create simple metaphorical expressions (AU)

No disponible

Analysis of the 13C natural abundance of CO2 gas from sparkling drinks by gas chromatography/combustion/isotope ratio mass spectrometry.

A simple and rapid method to measure naturally occurring delta(13)C values of headspace CO(2) of sparkling drinks has been set up, using direct injections on a gas chromatograph coupled to an isotope ratio mass spectrometer, through a combustion interface (GC/C/IRMS). We tested the method on CO(2) gas from several origins. No significant isotopic fractionation was observed nor influences by secondary compounds eventually present in the gas phase. Standard deviation for these measurements was found to be <0.1 per thousand.