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Background: Transcatheter closure of secundum atrial septal defect (ASD) is nowadays the main treatment option in many centers worldwide. In symptomatic infants or in those with certain comorbidities, there is a need for early intervention. Limited data are available about the procedural safety in infants below 15 kg of weight. Methods: Retrospective review of all patients referred to our center f

Objective The interleukin 2 (IL-2) and interleukin 21 (IL-21) locus at chromosome 4q27 has been associated with several autoimmune diseases, and both genes are related to immune system functions. The aim of this study was to evaluate the role of the IL-2/IL-21 locus in systemic sclerosis (SSc). Patients and methods The case control study included 4493 SSc Caucasian patients and 5856 healthy contro

Type-2 diabetes (T2D) is a complex disease characterized by insulin resistance in target tissues and impaired insulin release from pancreatic beta cells. As central tissue of glucose homeostasis, the pancreatic islet continues to be an important focus of research to understand the pathophysiology of the disease. The increased access to human pancreatic islets has resulted in improved knowledge of

OBJECTIVE-Human blood glucose levels have likely evolved toward their current point of stability over hundreds of thousands of years. The robust population stability of this trait is called canalization. It has been represented by a hyperbolic function of two variables: insulin sensitivity and insulin response. Environmental changes due to global migration may have pushed some human subpopulations

Background Patients who have suffered from tuberculosis are at risk of respiratory failure with hypercapnea from chest wall deformity and hypoxia from pulmonary sequelae. The combination of hypercapnea and hypoxia justifies both mechanical ventilation and oxygen therapy as treatment options. We aimed to study which treatment mode is associated with the best survival in patients with the combinatio

The World Health Organization/United Nations Children's Fund Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative: Revised, Updated, and Expanded for Integrated Care (2009) identifies the need for expanding the guidelines originally developed for maternity units to include neonatal intensive care. For this purpose, an expert group from the Nordic countries and Quebec, Canada, prepared a draft proposal, which was dis

Background: Over the past quarter century, the incidence of tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) has increased in most European nations. However, the number of humans stricken by the disease varies from year to year. A method for predicting major increases and decreases is needed. Methods: We assembled a 25-y database (1984-2008) of the number of human TBE victims and wildlife and climate data for the St

Background: Uveal melanoma is the most common primary intraocular malignancy in adults. Despite successful control of the primary tumor, metastatic disease will ultimately develop in approximately 50% of patients, with the liver being the most common site for metastases. The median survival for patients with liver metastases is between 6 and 12 months, and no treatment has in randomized trials eve

Aims Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is the commonest inherited cause of sudden cardiac death in children; current guidelines suggest HCM screening after 12-15 years of age. The study aims to establish the age range at highest risk. Methods and results Cohort study from six regional centres of paediatric cardiology, including children presenting with sudden death; n = 150 (59% = male; 39% famili

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) independently associates with an increased risk of coronary artery disease (CAD), but it has not been fully investigated whether this co-morbidity involves shared pathophysiological mechanisms. To identify potential common pathways across the two diseases, we tested all recently published single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with human lung

Almost all boreal and temperate forest tree species live in symbiosis with ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF); the trees transfer carbon (C) to the fungi in exchange for nutrients and water. Several studies have shown that experimental application of inorganic nitrogen (N) represses production of EMF extramatrical mycelia (EMM), but studies along N deposition gradients are underrepresented. Other environ

Inom ramen för det svenska forskningsprojektet Taktik och metodik vid brand i undermarksanläggningar har ett enkelt planeringsverktyg utvecklats som bl a erbjuder stöd till beslutsfattare involverade i planeringen av räddningsinsatser i väg- och järnvägstunnlar. Verktyget, som har utvecklats vid Lunds universitet, heter TuFT och är en förkortning av Tunnel Fire Tools. TuFT kan beskrivas som ett my

In birds, fat accumulation before and during migration has been shown to be endogenously controlled and tuned by, among other factors, the Earth's magnetic field. However, our knowledge about the influence of the geomagnetic field on the fuelling in migrating birds is still limited to just a few nocturnally migrating passerine species. In order to study if variations of the magnetic field can also

The move towards fire performance-based design in building and transport regulations has led to an increased use of fire models. This increased use of these models and the evolution of different regulations have put higher demands on the predictive capability of fire models. The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of different activities relating to the validation and verification of comp

Abstract in UndeterminedOver the last decade a great deal of research attention has been paid to the Internet as a potential vehicle for civic and/or political engagement among young people. Many of these analyses have been looking (or perhaps hoping) for a simple cause-and-effect relationship. Young people seem uninterested in traditional forms of politics, but they are very interested in Interne

Improvements in metabolite-profiling techniques are providing increased breadth of coverage of the human metabolome and may highlight biomarkers and pathways in common diseases such as diabetes. Using a metabolomics platform that analyzes intermediary organic acids, purines, pyrimidines, and other compounds, we performed a nested case-control study of 188 individuals who developed diabetes and 188