Abstract
Background
Sleep is an essential physiological process and disturbance of sleeping pattern may be associated with cardiovascular risk profile and atheromatosis. Short but also long sleep ...duration (LSD) may be adversely affect cardiovascular parameters.
Purpose
To study how sleep duration is associated with cardiovascular risk profile and carotid atherosclerotic burden.
Methods
Corinthia study is a cross sectional epidemiological study based on 2043 inhabitants (age 40–99 years) of Corinthia region in Greece. Ultrasonography was used to measure intima media thickness (IMT) in the left and right common carotid artery, carotid bulb and internal carotid artery. The mean IMT (meanIMT) were determined as representative values of carotid atherosclerosis burden. Thickness of IMT>1.5 mm or protrusion >50% compared to adjacent segments was considered as atherosclerotic plaque. Based on questionnaires of Corinthia study, total sleeping time per day was recorded. A sleep duration of 7 to 8 h was consider normal (NSD), sleep duration <6 h was consider very short (VSSD), 6–7 h sleep duration was considered short (SSD) and participants with >8 h sleep duration was categorized as LSD.
Results
Concerning gender more men than women were categorized in the NSD (26% vs. 21%, p<0.001). Subjects in the NSD were also younger compared to subjects categorized in other sleeping patterns (VSSD: 66±12 y vs. SSD: 63±12 y vs. NSD: 62±12 y vs. LSD: 66±12 y, p<0.001), have less prevalence of diabetes mellitus (p<0.05). There was no difference according to sleeping pattern in body mass index, prevalence of hypertension, cardiovascular disease, hyperlipidemia and on current smoking habits according to sleeping patterns. Interestingly, meanIMT (VSSD: 1.08±0.51 mm vs. SSD: 0.97±0.42 mm vs. NSD: 0.97±0.41 mm vs. LSD: 1.14±1.64 mm, p=0.04) and carotid atherosclerotic plaque (VSSD: 35% vs. SSD: 25% vs. NSD: 20% vs. LSD: 30%, p=0.006) was decreased in NSD subjects. Importantly, even after adjustment for the confounders logistic regression analysis revealed that subjects in the NSD group have 50% less odds of carotid atheromatic plaque than subjects in the VSSD (Odds ratio: 0.5, 95% CI 0.28–0.90, p=0.02) (Figure).
Conclusion
A balanced sleeping pattern with 8h of sleep daily can act as an additive cardioprotective factor in the modern western type societies. Short especially less than 6 hours and long (>8 hours) sleeping duration may act as a cardiovascular risk factor.
Tumour molecular profiling in HNSCC is not routinely incorporated into clinical practice due to lack of validated biomarkers. Liquid biopsy represents noninvasive approach to capture tumour ...heterogeneity and evolution during treatment. We utilized highly sensitive sequencing method, SafeSEQ, to evaluate plasma circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) in 2 cohorts of HNSCC patients (pts) with locally advanced (LA) and metastatic disease.
Cohort 1 included 54 pts with LA HNSCC treated with cisplatin chemoradiotherapy. Plasma was obtained at baseline, end of treatment (EOT) and disease progression (PD) and compared to baseline tissue mutation status. Cohort 2 included 15 pts with metastatic disease who received nivolumab, plasma results were compared at baseline and post 2ndcycle. Sequencing for p53, CDKN2A, HRAS and PIK3CA was performed with SafeSEQ on both plasma and tissue specimens.
51/54 pts with LA disease were evaluated at baseline for tissue (t) and plasma (p) mutation status. P53 was the most common mutation (t: 49%), p: 39%) followed by CDKN2A (t: 17.6%,p: 4%), PIK3CA (t: 9.8%, p: 6%) and HRAS (t: 7.8%, p: 4%). Interestingly 3 (5.8%) pts had detectable HRAS mutations in plasma that were not detected in tissue at baseline. In LA pts whose tumor harbored mutation, ctDNA was detectable in 56% at baseline. Concordance of mutation results between baseline plasma and tissue was 51%. At PD (N=10) ctDNA exhibited higher rate of detectability compared to baseline and novel mutations emerged in 40% of cases. In cohort 2, 93% (14/15) of metastatic pts exhibited a detectable plasma mutation prior to and during treatment with nivolumab (p53 (100%), CDKN2A (28.6%), HRAS (21%) and PI3KCA (7%)). The pt with no mutation detected was HPV+. During treatment, new plasma HRAS mutations emerged in 3 (21%) pts, while nivolumab did not modulate the overall mutation profile. There was trend for better PFS in pts of cohort 1 whose tumors contained none of analyzed mutations (p=0.08) while disruptive p53 mutation status based on Poeta classification was not prognostic.
Plasma mutation detection with SafeSEQ is useful in HNSCC for molecular profiling and real-time disease monitoring and may inform clinical trial design.
University funding & Company.
Sysmex-inostics.
D. Edelstein: Full / Part-time employment: Sysmex-Inostics. K. Stieler: Full / Part-time employment: Sysmex-Inostics. D. Heim: Full / Part-time employment: Sysmex-inostics. F. Holtrup: Full / Part-time employment: Sysmex-inostics. A. Psyrri: Research grant / Funding (institution): Kura; Research grant / Funding (institution): BMS; Advisory / Consultancy: BMS; Honoraria (self): BMS; Honoraria (self): MSD; Advisory / Consultancy: MSD; Honoraria (self): Roche; Advisory / Consultancy: AstraZeneca; Honoraria (self): Leo. All other authors have declared no conflicts of interest.
We present the results of a measurement of isotopic concentrations and atomic number ratio of a double-sided actinide target using α-spectroscopy and mass spectrometry. The double-sided actinide ...target, with predominantly 239Pu on one side and 235U on the other, was used in the fission Time Projection Chamber (fissionTPC) for a measurement of the neutron-induced fission cross-section ratio between the two isotopes. The measured atomic number ratio is needed to extract an absolute measurement fission cross-section ratio. The 239Pu/235U atom number ratio was measured with a combination of mass spectrometry and α-spectroscopy with a planar silicon detector achieving uncertainties of less than 1%. Different strategies for estimating isotopic concentration from the α-spectrum are presented to demonstrate the potential of these methods for non-destructive target assay. We found that a combination of fitting spectra with constraints from mass spectrometry, and summing counts in a region of the spectrum provided the most consistent results with the lowest uncertainty.
The resoneut detector setup is described, which was developed for resonance spectroscopy using (d,n) reactions with radioactive beams in inverse kinematics and at energies around the Coulomb barrier. ...The goal of experiments with this setup is to determine the spectrum and proton-transfer strengths of the low-lying resonances, which have an impact on astrophysical reaction rates. The setup is optimized for l=0 proton transfers in inverse kinematics, for which most neutrons are emitted at backward angles with energies in the 80–300 keV range. The detector system is comprised of 9 p-terphenyl scintillators as neutron detectors, two annular silicon-strip detectors for light charged particles, one position-resolving gas ionization chamber for heavy ion detection, and a barrel of NaI-detectors for the detection of γ-rays. The detector commissioning and performance characteristics are described with an emphasis on the neutron-detector components.
The resoneut detector setup is described, which was developed for resonance spectroscopy using (d,n) reactions with radioactive beams in inverse kinematics at energies around the Coulomb barrier. The ...purpose of this setup is to enable experiments on the spectroscopy of low-lying resonances with an impact on astrophysical reaction rates. The setup is optimized for l = 0 proton transfers, for which most neutrons are emitted with energies in the 80-300 keV range for beam energies of 4-5 MeV/u. The detector system is comprised of 12 p-terphenyl scintillators as neutron detectors, two annular silicon-strip detectors for light charged particles, one position-resolving gas ionization chamber for heavy ion detection, and a barrel of NaI-detectors for the detection of γ-rays. Here, the detector commissioning and performance characteristics are described with an emphasis on the neutron-detector components.
The 6Li(p,γ) 7Be cross section influences a variety of astrophysical scenarios, including big-bang and stellar nucleosynthesis. In recent years, conflicting results of direct measurements have been ...published, reporting contradictory low-energy trends. To shed light on the contradiction between the existing data sets, the reaction was studied using the asymptotic normalization coefficient (ANC) technique which was up-to-now never used for this reaction. To derive the ANC, the 6Li(3He,d) 7Be transfer reaction, studied at the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Catania and at the John. D. Fox Superconducting Accelerator Laboratory at Florida State University, was re-analyzed, focusing on the proton transfer mechanism the α transfer process is discussed by Kiss et al. Phys. Lett. B 807, 135606 (2020). Here, the energy of the 3He beam impinging on a 6Li target was Elab = 3 MeV and Elab = 5 MeV. The yield of the emitted deuterons was measured with high precision by using silicon ΔE – E telescopes.