Home-based exercise rehabilitation in addition to specialist heart failure nurse care: design, rationale and recruitment to the Birmingham Rehabilitation Uptake Maximisation study for patients with congestive heart failure (BRUM-CHF): a randomised controlled trial

Background

We aimed to assess whether we could identify a graded association between increasing number of components of the metabolic syndrome and cardiac structural and functional abnormalities independently of predicted risk of coronary heart disease by the Framingham risk score.

Methods

We conducted a cross-sectional study on a random sample of the urban population of Porto aged 45 years or over. Six hundred and eighty-four participants were included. Data were collected by a structured clinical interview with a physician, ECG and a transthoracic M-mode and 2D echocardiogram. The metabolic syndrome was defined according to ATPIII-NCEP. The association between the number of features of the metabolic syndrome and the cardiac structural and functional abnormalities was assessed by 3 multivariate regression models: adjusting for age and gender, adjusting for the 10-year predicted risk of coronary heart disease by Framingham risk score and adjusting for age, gender and systolic blood pressure.

Results

There was a positive association between the number of features of metabolic syndrome and parameters of cardiac structure and function, with a consistent and statistically significant trend for all cardiac variables considered when adjusting for age and gender. Parameters of left ventricular geometry patterns, left atrial diameter and diastolic dysfunction maintained this trend when taking into account the 10-year predicted risk of coronary heart disease by the Framingham score as an independent variable, while left ventricular systolic dysfunction did not. The prevalence of left ventricular diastolic dysfunction, and the mean left ventricular mass, left ventricular diameter and left atrial diameter increased significantly with the number of features of the metabolic syndrome when additionally adjusting for systolic blood pressure as a continuous variable.

Conclusion

Increasing severity of metabolic syndrome was associated with increasingly compromised structure and function of the heart. This association was independent of Framingham risk score for indirect indices of diastolic dysfunction but not systolic dysfunction, and was not explained by blood pressure level.     

Niche construction and Dreaming logic: aboriginal patch mosaic burning and varanid lizards (Varanus gouldii) in Australia

Anthropogenic fire is a form of ecosystem engineering that creates greater landscape patchiness at small spatial scales: such rescaling of patch diversity through mosaic burning has been argued to be a form of niche construction, the loss of which may have precipitated the decline and extinction of many endemic species in the Western Desert of Australia. We find evidence to support this hypothesis relative to one keystone species, the sand monitor lizard (Varanus gouldii). Paradoxically, V. gouldii populations are higher where Aboriginal hunting is most intense. This effect is driven by an increase in V. gouldii densities near successional edges, which is higher in landscapes that experience extensive human burning. Over time, the positive effects of patch mosaic burning while hunting overwhelm the negative effects of predation in recently burned areas to produce overall positive impacts on lizard populations. These results offer critical insights into the maintenance of animal communities in the desert, supporting the hypothesis that the current high rate of endemic species decline among small animals may be linked to the interaction between invasive species and mid-century removal of Aboriginal niche construction through hunting and patch mosaic burning.     

The separation of β-glucanases produced by Cytophaga johnsonii and their role in the lysis of yeast cell walls

1. When Cytophaga johnsonii was grown in the presence of suitable inducers the culture fluid was capable of lysing thiol-treated yeast cell walls in vitro. 2. Autoclaved or alkali-extracted cells, isolated cell walls and glucan preparations made from them were effective inducers, but living yeast cells or cells killed by minimal heat treatment were not. 3. Chromatographic fractionation of lytic culture fluids showed the presence of two types of endo-beta-(1-->3)-glucanase and several beta-(1-->6)-glucanases; the latter may be induced separately by growing the myxo-bacterium in the presence of lutean. 4. Extensive solubilization of yeast cell walls was obtained only with preparations of one of these glucanases, an endo-beta-(1-->3)-glucanase producing as end products mainly oligosaccharides having five or more residues. Lysis by the other endo-beta-(1-->3)-glucanase was incomplete. 5. The beta-(1-->6)-glucanases produced a uniform thinning of the cell walls, and mannan-peptide was found in the solution. 6. These results, and the actions of the enzyme preparations on a variety of wall-derived preparations made from baker's yeast, are discussed in the light of present conceptions of yeast cell-wall structure.