Medium-term outcomes of 78,808 patients after heart valve surgery in a middle-income country: a nationwide population-based study.

BACKGROUND: Heart valve surgery outcomes are unknown in middle-income countries and thus cannot be used in health system decision making processes. This study estimated in-hospital mortality and medium and long-term survival. METHODS: This was a retrospective study of 78,806 patients who underwent heart valve surgery between 2001 and 2007 in Brazil. Two national databases were used, the Hospital Information System and the Mortality Information System. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and log-rank tests were performed. Maximum and median follow-up was 7.7 and 2.8 years, respectively (0.002-7.707). RESULTS: Valve replacement accounted for 69.1% of procedures performed. Mitral stenosis, the most common valve injury, represented 38.9% of the total. In 94.7% of mitral stenosis patients, aetiology was rheumatic heart disease. In-hospital mortality was 7.6% and was higher for women, for patients who had undergone concomitant coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) and for the elderly. Overall survival was 69.9% at the end of follow-up. Survival was worst among elderly, male and concomitant CABG patients (P<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Rheumatic heart disease is still a major public health problem in Brazil. In-hospital mortality and global survival rates of patients who have undergone heart valve surgery were less satisfactory than those reported in high-income countries. The findings of this study can contribute to guiding decision making processes in middle-income countries similar to Brazil and others concerned with improving the quality of care.

Seven years of use of implantable cardioverter-defibrillator therapies: a nationwide population-based assessment of their effectiveness in real clinical settings.

BACKGROUND: The efficacy of implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) and cardiac resynchronization therapy-defibrillator (CRT-D) therapy has already been established in clinical trials but their effectiveness in several clinical settings remains undetermined. This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of ICD and CRT-D therapies within the Brazilian National Health System (SUS). METHODS: All patients who underwent ICD or CRT-D implantation within the SUS from 2001 to 2007 were included in the study. We compared estimated Kaplan-Meier survival curves using the Peto's test. Prognostic factors were selected using Cox's models. RESULTS: There were included 3,295 patients in the ICD group and 681 patients in the CRT-D group. Cardiac causes accounted for 79% of all deaths in both groups and Chagas' heart disease accounted for 31% of these deaths. In the CRT-D group, survival significantly decreased around the fourth year of follow-up, with a decrease from 59.5% to 38.3% in 5.5 months. Transvenous implantation technique was used in 62% of CRT-D patients. In-hospital case-fatality rates were higher in those undergoing surgical implantation (5.3%) than those undergoing transvenous implantation (1.6%) (p = 0.02). CONCLUSIONS: The results show that short-term, medium-term and long-term effectiveness of ICD therapy appears to be similar to that evidenced in clinical trials. In the CRT-D group, in-hospital case-fatality and 30-day case-fatality were higher than those reported in other studies. Surgical epicardial implantation technique was performed in this group at a higher frequency than that reported in the literature and was associated with poorer short-term prognosis.

Characterisation of Omicron Variant during COVID-19 Pandemic and the Impact of Vaccination, Transmission Rate, Mortality, and Reinfection in South Africa, Germany, and Brazil.

Several variants of SARS-CoV-2 have been identified in different parts of the world, including Gamma, detected in Brazil, Delta, detected in India, and the recent Omicron variant, detected in South Africa. The emergence of a new variant is a cause of great concern. This work considers an extended version of an SIRD model capable of incorporating the effects of vaccination, time-dependent transmissibility rates, mortality, and even potential reinfections during the pandemic. We use this model to characterise the Omicron wave in Brazil, South Africa, and Germany. During Omicron, the transmissibility increased by five for Brazil and Germany and eight for South Africa, whereas the estimated mortality was reduced by three-fold. We estimated that the reported cases accounted for less than 25% of the actual cases during Omicron. The mortality among the nonvaccinated population in these countries is, on average, three to four times higher than the mortality among the fully vaccinated. Finally, we could only reproduce the observed dynamics after introducing a new parameter that accounts for the percentage of the population that can be reinfected. Reinfection was as high as 40% in South Africa, which has only 29% of its population fully vaccinated and as low as 13% in Brazil, which has over 70% and 80% of its population fully vaccinated and with at least one dose, respectively. The calibrated models were able to estimate essential features of the complex virus and vaccination dynamics and stand as valuable tools for quantifying the impact of protocols and decisions in different populations.

Timing the race of vaccination, new variants, and relaxing restrictions during COVID-19 pandemic.

Late in 2019, China identified a new type of coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, and due to its fast spread, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared a pandemic named COVID-19. Some variants of this virus were detected, including the Delta, which caused new waves of infections. This work uses an extended version of a SIRD model that includes vaccination effects to measure the impact of the Delta variant in three countries: Germany, Israel and Brazil. The calibrated models were able to reproduce the dynamics of the above countries. In addition, hypothetical scenarios were simulated to quantify the impact of vaccination and mitigation policies during the Delta wave. The results showed that the model could reproduce the complex dynamics observed in the different countries. The estimated increase of transmission rate due to the Delta variant was highest in Israel (7.9), followed by Germany (2.7) and Brazil (1.5). These values may support the hypothesis that people immunised against COVID-19 may lose their defensive antibodies with time since Israel, Germany, and Brazil fully vaccinated half of the population in March, July, and October. The scenario to study the impact of vaccination revealed relative reductions in the total number of deaths between 30% and 250%; an absolute reduction of 300 thousand deaths in Brazil due to vaccination during the Delta wave. The second hypothetical scenario revealed that mitigation policies saved up to 300 thousand Brazilians; relative reductions in the total number of deaths between 24% and 120% in the three analysed countries. Therefore, the results suggest that both vaccination and mitigation policies were crucial in decreasing the spread and the number of deaths during the Delta wave.

Phenotypic and in silico studies for a series of synthetic thiosemicarbazones as New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase carbapenemase inhibitors.

The past two decades have been marked by a global spread of bacterial resistance to ß-lactam drugs and carbapenems derivatives are the ultimate treatment against multidrug-resistant bacteria. ß-lactamase expression is related to resistance which demands the development of bacterial resistance blockers. Drug inhibitor combinations of serine-ß-lactamase and ß-lactam were successful employed in therapy despite their inactivity against New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase (NDM). Until now, few compounds are active against NDM-producing bacteria and no specific inhibitors are available yet. The rational strategy for NDM inhibitors development starts with in vitro assays aiming to seek compounds that could act synergistically with ß-lactam antibiotics. Thus, eight thiosemicarbazone derivatives were synthesized and investigated for their ability to reverse the resistant phenotype in NDM in Enterobacter cloacae. Phenotypic screening indicated that four isatin-beta-thiosemicarbazones showed Fractional Inhibitory Concentration (FIC) ≤ 250 µM in the presence of meropenem (4 µg/mL). The most promising compound (FIC= 31.25 µM) also presented synergistic effect (FICI = 0.34). Docking and molecular dynamics studies on NDM-thiosemicarbazone complex suggested that 2,3-dihydro-1H-indol-2-one subunit interacts with catalytic zinc and interacted through hydrogen bonds with Asp124 acting like a carboxylic acid bioisostere. Additionally, thiosemicarbazone tautomer with oxidized sulfur (thione) seems to act as a spacer rather than zinc chelator, and the aromatic moieties are stabilized by pi-pi and cation-pi interactions with His189 and Lys221 residues. Our results addressed some thiosemicarbazone structural changes to increase its biological activity against NDM and highlight its scaffold as promising alternatives to treat bacterial resistance.Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma.

Investigating the Spatial Associations Between Amyloid-ß Deposition, Grey Matter Volume, and Neuroinflammation in Alzheimer's Disease.

BACKGROUND: It has been proposed that amyloid-ß (Aß) plays a causal role in Alzheimer's disease (AD) by triggering a series of pathologic events-possibly including neuroinflammation-which culminate in progressive brain atrophy. However, the interplay between the two pathological molecular events and how both are associated with neurodegeneration is still unclear. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to estimate the spatial inter-relationship between neurodegeneration, neuroinflammation and Aß deposition in a cohort of 20 mild AD patients and 17 healthy controls (HC). METHODS: We resorted to magnetic resonance imaging to measure cortical atrophy, using the radiotracer 11C-PK11195 PET to measure neuroinflammation levels and 11C-PiB PET to assess Aß levels. Between-group comparisons were computed to explore AD-related changes in the three types of markers. To examine the effects of each one of the molecular pathologic mechanisms on neurodegeneration we computed: 1) ANCOVAs with the anatomic data, controlling for radiotracer uptake differences between groups and 2) voxel-based multiple regression analysis between-modalities. In addition, associations in anatomically defined regions of interests were also investigated. RESULTS: We found significant differences between AD and controls in the levels of atrophy, neuroinflammation, and Aß deposition. Associations between Aß aggregation and brain atrophy were detected in AD in a widely distributed pattern, whereas associations between microglia activation and structural measures of neurodegeneration were restricted to few anatomically regions. CONCLUSION: In summary, Aß deposition, as opposed to neuroinflammation, was more associated with cortical atrophy, suggesting a prominent role of Aß in neurodegeneration at a mild stage of the AD.

Can 11C-PiB-PET Relative Delivery R1 or 11C-PiB-PET Perfusion Replace 18F-FDG-PET in the Assessment of Brain Neurodegeneration?

BACKGROUND: Pittsburgh Compound B (PiB) positron emission tomography (PET) is used to visualize in vivo amyloid plaques in the brain. Frequently the PiB examinations are complemented with a fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) PET scan to further assess neurodegeneration. OBJECTIVE: Our goal is to identify alternative correlates of FDG images by assessing which kinetic methods originate PiB derived relative delivery ratio (R1) images that can be correlated with the FDG images, and to compare them with PiB perfusion (pPiB) images obtained from the early-phase of PiB acquisition. METHODS: We selected 52 patients with cognitive impairment who underwent a dynamic PiB and FDG acquisitions. To compute the R1 images, two simplified reference tissue models (SRTM and SRTM2) and two multi-linear reference tissue models (MRTM and MRTM2) were used. The pPiB images were obtained in two different time intervals. RESULTS: All six types of images were of good quality and highly correlated with the FDG images (mean voxelwise within-subjects r > 0.92). The higher correlation was found for FDG-R1(MRTM). Regarding the voxelwise regional correlation, the higher mean all brain correlations was r = 0.825 for FDG-R1(MRTM) and statistically significant in the whole brain analysis. CONCLUSION: All R1 and pPiB images here tested have potential to assess the metabolic impact of neurodegeneration almost as reliably as the FDG images. However, this is not enough to validate these images for a single-subject analysis compared with the FDG image, and thus they cannot yet be used clinically to replace the FDG image before such evaluation.

Adenosine A2A Receptors Control Glutamatergic Synaptic Plasticity in Fast Spiking Interneurons of the Prefrontal Cortex.

Adenosine A2A receptors (A2AR) are activated upon increased synaptic activity to assist in the implementation of long-term plastic changes at synapses. While it is reported that A2AR are involved in the control of prefrontal cortex (PFC)-dependent behavior such as working memory, reversal learning and effort-based decision making, it is not known whether A2AR control glutamatergic synapse plasticity within the medial PFC (mPFC). To elucidate that, we tested whether A2AR blockade affects long-term plasticity (LTP) of excitatory post-synaptic potentials in pyramidal neurons and fast spiking (FS) interneurons in layer 5 of the mPFC and of population spikes. Our results show that A2AR are enriched at mPFC synapses, where their blockade reversed the direction of plasticity at excitatory synapses onto layer 5 FS interneurons from LTP to long-term depression, while their blockade had no effect on the induction of LTP at excitatory synapses onto layer 5 pyramidal neurons. At the network level, extracellularly induced LTP of population spikes was reduced by A2AR blockade. The interneuron-specificity of A2AR in controlling glutamatergic synapse LTP may ensure that during periods of high synaptic activity, a proper excitation/inhibition balance is maintained within the mPFC.

Descolamento seroso de coroide como manifestação tardia da síndrome de Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada / Serous choroidal detachment in chronic stage of Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada syndrome

Resumo Relatamos um caso atípico de uma paciente de 40 anos com apresentação completa da Síndrome de Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada (SVKH) que após 17 anos do diagnóstico inicial evoluiu com descolamento seroso de coroide. A paciente procurou atendimento com queixa de dor em olho esquerdo (OE). O exame oftalmológico revelou acuidade visual (AV) igual a de movimento de mãos, à biomicroscopia foi observada reação inflamatória granulomatosa na câmara anterior, a tonometria foi igual a 0 mmhg, e a fundoscopia indevassável pela pouca midríase e turvação de meios em OE. O descolamento seroso de coroide foi avaliado através de ultrassonografia ocular. A abordagem terapeutica intituida para paciente consistiu em prednisona 1mg/kg/dia via oral, dexametasona 1mg/mL e atropina 1% colírios. A evolução do quadro foi satisfatória, com melhora da AV para 20/40, ausência de reação inflamatória em câmara anterior, normalização da pressão intraocular e resolução do descolamento seroso de coroide em OE. Concluimos que a fase crônica da SVKH, apesar da manifestação classicamente descrita ser uveíte anterior, pode ter outras apresentações e o descolamento seroso da coroide é uma rara complicação.

Abstract We report an atypical case of a 40-year-old woman with complete presentation of Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada Syndrome (VKH) who presented with unilateral serous choroidal detachment 17 years after the diagnosis. The patient complained of pain in the left eye, the ophthalmologic examination revealed visual acuity (VA) equal to hand motion; biomicroscopy revealed a granulomatous inflammatory reaction in the anterior chamber, tonometry was equal to 0 mmhg, and the fundoscopy was impracticable. Serous choroidal detachment was assessed by ocular ultrasonography. The therapeutic approach proposed for the patient consisted of prednisone 1mg / kg / day orally, dexamethasone 1mg / mL and atropine 1% eye drops. The evolution of the condition was satisfactory, with VA improvement to 20/40, absence of inflammatory reaction in anterior chamber, normalization of intraocular pressure and resolution of serous choroidal detachment in OS. We conclude that the chronic phase of VKH, although classically described as anterior uveitis, may have other presentations and the serous choroid detachment is a rare complication.

Síndrome de Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada: Avaliação da fase da doença na qual os pacientes recebem o primeiro atendimento em serviço especializado / Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada syndrome: evaluation of the disease phase in which patients receive the first specialized attendance

Resumo Objetivo: Avaliar em qual fase da síndrome de Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada (SVKH) os pacientes recebem o primeiro atendimento em serviço especializado. Métodos: Foram analisados prontuários de 14 pacientes atendidos no Setor de Uveítes do Hospital Universitário Clementino Fraga Filho da UFRJ no período de janeiro de 2014 a março de 2017. Nesta análise, foram observados o sexo, a idade, a fase da doença e a acuidade visual destes pacientes com ao menos doença provável da SVKH. Resultados: Observamos que 35,4% dos pacientes apresentavam a doença ainda na fase uveítica e que 78,5% destes pacientes apresentava acuidade visual igual ou pior que 0,05. Destes pacientes, 78,5% eram do sexo feminino e 21,5% do sexo masculino e a mediana de idades foi de 34 anos. Conclusão: Os pacientes analisados obtiveram dificuldade em ter acesso precoce a um setor especializado, afetando assim, diretamente o tratamento e prognóstico visual.

Abstract Objective: To evaluate in which phase of Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada (VKH) syndrome the patients receive the first attendance in specialized service. Methods: A retrospective study was conduted to evaluate medical records of 14 patients with VKH in the Clementino Fraga Filho University Hospital of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro from January 2014 to March 2017. In this analysis, gender, age, stage of disease and visual acuity of these patients with at least probable VKH were recorded. Results: Of these patients, 78.5% were female and 21.5% male and the median age was 34 years. We observed that 35.4% of the patients had the disease still in the uveitic phase and that 78.5% of these patients had visual acuity equal to or worse than 0.05. Conclusion: There is a delay in the admission of these patients to a specialized sector, thus affecting directly the treatment and visual prognosis.