The creation of advanced nursing roles in diabetes management, with specific skills such as nurse prescribing, has resulted in nurses taking on roles that have traditionally been associated with doctors.We aimed to examine the effectiveness of nurse-led clinics, in which nurses were involved in prescribing, on haemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) among people with type 2 diabetes.We systematically searched ...

Oxidative stress is a causal factor in the development of diabetic retinopathy; however, clinically relevant strategies to treat the disease by augmenting antioxidant defense mechanisms have not been fully explored. We hypothesized that boosting nuclear factor erythroid-2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) antioxidant capacity with the novel Nrf2 activator dh404, would protect the retina in diabetes inclu...

Catheter ablation has become standard of care in patients with symptomatic atrial fibrillation (AF). Although there have been significant advances in our understanding and technology, a substantial proportion of patients have ongoing AF requiring repeat procedures. Pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) is the cornerstone of AF ablation; however, it is less effective in patients with persistent as oppo...

Chronic cardiometabolic diseases, including cardiovascular disease (CVD), type 2 diabetes (T2D) and chronic kidney disease (CKD), share many modifiable risk factors and can be prevented using combined prevention programs. Valid risk prediction tools are needed to accurately identify individuals at risk.We aimed to validate a previously developed non-invasive risk prediction tool for predicting ...

Left ventricular (LV) ejection fraction (LVEF) is a simple measure of global systolic function that pervades the risk evaluation and management of many cardiovascular diseases. However, this parameter is limited not only by technical challenges, but also by pathophysiological entities where the ratio of stroke volume to LV cavity size is preserved. The assessment of global longitudinal strain (...

The aim of this study was to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis to estimate the normal ranges of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based feature tracking (FT) and to identify sources of variations. Similar analyses were also performed for strain encoding, displacement encoding with stimulated echoes, and myocardial tagging.MRI-FT is a novel technique for quantification of myocardial d...

This study sought to measure the impact on all-cause death or readmission of adding center-based exercise training (ET) to disease management programs for patients with a recent acute heart failure (HF) hospitalization.ET is recommended for patients with HF, but evidence is based mainly on ET as a single intervention in stable outpatients.A randomized, controlled trial with blinded outcome asse...

Five International Federation for the Surgery of Obesity and Metabolic Disorders (IFSO) surveys since 1998 have estimated the volume and type of bariatric surgery being done in constituent member countries. These reports did not include baseline demographic descriptions.An IFSO Global Registry pilot project in 2014 demonstrated that it was possible to amalgamate large numbers of individual pati...

Severely obese adolescents harbor numerous cardiovascular disease risk factors (CVD-RFs), which improve after metabolic and bariatric surgery (MBS). However, predictors of change in CVD-RFs among adolescents have not yet been reported.The Teen-Longitudinal Assessment of Bariatric Surgery study (NCT00474318) prospectively collected anthropometric and health status data on 242 adolescents undergo...

Growth/differentiation factor 8 (GDF8), or myostatin, negatively regulates muscle mass. GDF8 is held in a latent state through interactions with its N-terminal prodomain, much like TGF-β. Using a combination of small-angle X-ray scattering and mutagenesis, we characterized the interactions of GDF8 with its prodomain. Our results show that the prodomain:GDF8 complex can exist in a fully latent s...

Objective measures of environmental attributes have been used to understand how neighborhood environments relate to physical activity. However, this method relies on detailed spatial data, which are often not easily available. Walk Score® is a free, publicly available web-based tool that shows how walkable a given location is based on objectively-derived proximity to several types of local dest...

Global assessments of burden of disease suggests there are sex differences in risk factors for chronic disease, including overweight/obesity, dietary patterns and habitual physical activity. Given that prevention efforts aim to target such factors to reduce disease risk, the age at which sex differences may occur is of particular interest. Early life to young adulthood is the optimal time for i...

Sterol 27-hydroxylase (CYP27A1) catalyzes the hydroxylation of cholesterol to 27-hydroxycholesterol (27-OHC) and regulates cholesterol homeostasis. In () double knockout (KO) mice fed with Western diet (WD), the atherosclerotic phenotype found in KO mice was reversed. As protective mechanism, up-regulation of and was proposed. heterozygote/ KO (het) mice, with reduced expression and norma...

Depression is a prevalent, independent predictor of mortality in patients with heart failure (HF). Depression is also common in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), which is itself an important risk factor for HF. However, association of depression with incident HF in T2DM is undefined. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the predictive value of depression in predicting incident HF in a co...

In nonrandomized, open-label studies, a transcatheter interatrial shunt device (IASD, Corvia Medical) was associated with lower pulmonary capillary wedge pressure (PCWP), fewer symptoms, and greater quality of life and exercise capacity in patients with heart failure (HF) and midrange or preserved ejection fraction (EF ≥40%). We conducted the first randomized sham-controlled trial to evaluate t...

Heart failure is a complex clinical syndrome, the incidence and prevalence of which is increased in diabetes mellitus, pre-diabetes, and obesity. Although this may arise from underlying coronary artery disease, it often occurs in the absence of significant major epicardial coronary disease, and most commonly manifests as heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. Despite epidemiological ev...

In humans, activity in the anterior midcingulate cortex (aMCC) is associated with both subjective thirst and swallowing. This region is therefore likely to play a prominent role in the regulation of drinking in response to dehydration. Using functional MRI, we investigated this possibility during a period of "drinking behavior" represented by a conjunction of preswallow and swallowing events. T...

To examine prospective associations of perceived attributes of local destinations and routes with middle-to-older aged adults' 4-year changes in walking for transport (WT) and walking for recreation (WR).Data were collected from adults aged 50-64 years old, living in Adelaide, Australia. Participants (N = 454) reported weekly frequency of WT and WR at baseline (2003-2004) and follow-up (2007-20...

Vascular dysfunction is a hallmark of hypertension and the strongest risk factor to date for coronary artery disease. As Y chromosome lineage has emerged as one of the strongest genetic predictors of cardiovascular disease risk to date, we investigated if Y chromosome lineage modulated this important facet in the stroke-prone spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHRSP) using consomic strains. Here, ...

The influence of lifestyle factors on survival following a diagnosis of colorectal cancer (CRC) is not well established. We examined associations between lifestyle factors measured before diagnosis and CRC survival. The Melbourne Collaborative Cohort Study collected data on alcohol intake, cigarette smoking and physical activity, and body measurements at baseline (1990-1994) and wave 2 (2003-20...