The ideal statin should be effective in patients in whom dyslipidemia and additional metabolic risk factors (e.g., abnormal glycemic control and metabolic syndrome) coexist. In such patients, a detrimental activation of tissue renin-angiotensin occurs that can be down-regulated with statin treatment. From the safety perspective, the ideal statin should be characterized GNS-1480 by a low risk of drug-drug interactions, the incidence of which is significantly increased in polymedicated patients. Unlike other statins, pitavastatin does not undergo cytochrome P450 3A4 metabolism and, therefore, demonstrates a low potential for drug-drug interactions. Recently,

treatment with pitavastatin has been associated with an improvement in cardio-renal function (improvement of diastolic function and reduced proteinuria). This might contribute to reduce the CV risk in addition to lipid control, the actual target for modern, effective lipid-lowering treatments.”
“Aims: All screening programmes in the UK use a primary thyroid stimulating

hormone (TSH) screen for congenital hypothyroidism. Recent attention has been paid to aspects of screening, such as the relation between blood spot TSH levels and birth weight or gestational age. The aim of our study was to determine the factors affecting screening neonatal TSH levels.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective analysis of blood spot screening TSH levels of all infants screened at a single regional screening laboratory.

Results: There were SRT2104 6498 infants screened during a 12-week period. Screening TSH level showed negative correlation with gestational age and birth weight. Multiple linear regression analysis revealed low birth weight as the only independent

factor affecting screening TSH level.

Conclusions: Low birth weight infants appear to be at risk of thyroidal dysfunction. Our study showed that there were clinically significant but weak correlation between higher screening TSH levels KPT-8602 solubility dmso and low birth weight. The clinical importance of these findings requires larger prospective studies to further elucidate the relevance of these factors affecting TSH screening levels.”
“Applications of diffusion-weighted (DW) magnetic resonance (MR) imaging outside the brain have gained increasing importance in recent years. Owing to technical improvements in MR imaging units and faster sequences, the need for noninvasive imaging without contrast medium administration, mainly in patients with renal insufficiency, can be met successfully by applying this technique. DW MR imaging is quantified by the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC), which provides information on diffusion and perfusion simultaneously. By using a biexponential fitting process of the DW MR imaging data, these two entities can be separated, because this type of fitting process can serve as an estimate of both the perfusion fraction and the true diffusion coefficient.