Proteomic architecture of frailty across the spectrum of cardiovascular disease.

While frailty is a prominent risk factor in an aging population, the underlying biology of frailty is incompletely described. Here, we integrate 979 circulating proteins across a wide range of physiologies with 12 measures of frailty in a prospective discovery cohort of 809 individuals with severe aortic stenosis (AS) undergoing transcatheter aortic valve implantation. Our aim was to characterize the proteomic architecture of frailty in a highly susceptible population and study its relation to clinical outcome and systems-wide phenotypes to define potential novel, clinically relevant frailty biology.

Personal statement versus psychological test as admission to the nursing degree: an evaluation.

Background: A review of admissions to nursing in Northern Ireland was prompted by the growing number of applications and a desire to ensure that the applicants had the right values for a career in nursing. Concerns regarding authorship, plagiarism and reliability of personal statements used to select applicants to interview was the focus of this research. This study evaluates the psychometric properties of a Personal Statement (PS) as a method for admission to a nursing programme and a values-based psychological screening tool, Nurse Match (NM).

Right Ventricular Shape Feature Quantification for Evaluation of Pulmonary Hypertension: Feasibility and Preliminary Associations With Clinical Outcome Submitted for Publication.

This study aimed to demonstrate feasibility of statistical shape analysis techniques to identify distinguishing features of right ventricle (RV) shape as related to hemodynamic variables and outcome data in pulmonary hypertension (PH). Cardiovascular magnetic resonance images were acquired from 50 patients (33 PH, 17 non-PH). Contemporaneous right heart catheterization data were collected for all individuals.

Chemokine receptor patterns and right heart failure in mechanical circulatory support.

Background: Right ventricular failure (RVF) complicates 9% to 44% of left ventricular assist device (LVAD) implants post-operatively. Current prediction scores perform only modestly in validation studies, and do not include immune markers. Chemokines are inflammatory signaling molecules with a fundamental role in cardiac physiology and stress adaptation.