Background— Angiotensinogen, a key protein in the renin-angiotensin system, plays an important role in cardiovascular hemostasis. Many studies have examined the association between polymorphisms in the angiotensinogen gene and risk of coronary heart disease (CHD), but the results have been inconsistent. Methods and Results— We performed a meta-analysis of 43 associations studies on 2 angiotensinogen polymorphisms (M235T and T174M) and risk of CHD published before March 2007, including a total of 13 478 CHD cases and 17 024 controls. We also explored potential sources of heterogeneity. In a combined analysis, the summary per-allele odds ratio for CHD of the M235T polymorphism was 1.11 (95% confidence interval, 1.03 to 1.19). However, when the analyses were restricted to 4 larger studies (n >500 cases), the summary per-allele odds ratio was 0.99 (95% confidence interval, 0.94 to 1.04). Our analyses detected a possibility of publication bias with an overestimate of the true association by smaller studies. A meta-analysis of studies on the 174M variant showed no significant overall association with CHD, yielding a per-allele odds ratio of 1.07 (95% confidence interval, 0.93 to 1.22). Conclusions— This meta-analysis suggested an overall weak association between the M235T polymorphism and CHD risk. However, the association was not observed in several larger studies, suggesting a publication bias. Additional very large-scale studies are warranted to provide conclusive evidence on the effects of the angiotensinogen gene and other genes within the renin-angiotensin system on risk of CHD.
Background: Gluten-free diets have grown in popularity, but evidence is lacking regarding gluten intake and long-term health. Methods: In Nurses’ Health Study (NHS, n=69,276), NHSII (n=88,610), and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (HPFS, n=41,908), we estimated gluten intake using a validated food-frequency questionnaire collected every 2-4 years. Incident T2D was defined as physician diagnosed diabetes and confirmed with supplementary information. Results: Gluten intake (mean ± standard deviation) was 5.83±2.23, 6.77±2.50, and 7.06±2.76 grams/day in NHS, NHSII, and HPFS, respectively, and strongly correlated with intakes of carbohydrate sources, especially refined grains, starch, and cereal fiber (Spearman correlation coefficients > 0.6). During 4.24 million years of follow-up, 15,947 T2D cases were confirmed. An inverse association between gluten intake and T2D risk was observed in all three cohorts after multivariate adjustment (table), and hazard ratio (HR, 95% confidence intervals [95%CI]) comparing extreme quintiles was 0.80(0.76, 0.84; P<0.001). The associations were slightly attenuated after further adjusting for cereal fiber (HR[95%CI]= 0.87[0.81, 0.93]), but not other carbohydrate components. Among participants without major chronic diseases and aged <65 years, changes in gluten intake were not significantly associated with weight gain in multivariate adjusted model: 4-year weight change (95%CI, lb) was 0.08(-0.06, 0.22; P=0.25) in NHS, -0.05(-0.18, 0.08; P=0.43) in NHSII, and 0.36(-0.24, 0.96; P=0.24) HPFS for each 5 grams increase in gluten intake. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that gluten intake may not exert significant adverse effects on the incidence of T2D or excess weight gain. Limiting gluten from diet is thus unlikely to facilitate T2D prevention and may lead to reduced consumption of cereal fiber or whole grains that help reduce diabetes risk.
Background: Prior observational studies suggest that self-reported consumption of dairy foods is associated with lower risk of stroke. Few studies have used circulating biomarkers that provide objective measure of dairy consumption. AIM: To test the hypothesis that plasma fatty acid biomarkers of dairy, 15:0, 17:0 and 16:1 n-7t, are associated with lower risk of incident stroke, especially ischemic stroke. Methods: We performed nested case-control studies in two prospective cohorts, the Nurses Health Study (NHS) and Health Professionals Follow Up Study (HPFS). Blood collected in 1989-90 (NHS) and 1993-94 (HPFS) was used to measure plasma 15:0, 17:0 and 16:1 n-7t biomarkers that are not endogenously synthesized. Stroke was prospectively adjudicated using medical records through 2004. A total of 597 stroke cases (NHS:475, HPFS:122), including 454 ischemic, 122 hemorrhagic and 21 unknown type, were matched 1:1 with controls on age, race, smoking, blood collection date and follow-up time (risk set sampling). Conditional logistic regression was used and cohort findings pooled by fixed-effects meta-analysis. Results: 15:0 was correlated with self-reported intakes of whole fat dairy foods (r=0.18 in NHS, r=0.18 in HPFS), low fat dairy (r=0.13, 0.11) and dairy fat (r=0.20, 0.30). 17:0 and 16:1 n-7t were less strongly correlated. After confounder adjustment, comparing the top vs. bottom quartiles, 15:0, 17:0 and 16:1 n-7t were not significantly associated with total or ischemic stroke in either cohort or overall ( Table 1 ). Results were similar after simultaneous adjustment for the 3 dairy fat biomarkers and for potential mediators. Conclusion: In these 2 cohorts, circulating dairy fat biomarkers were not significantly associated with stroke. Possible explanations include no true association, insufficient statistical power or measurement error due to changes in exposure over time. This study emphasizes need for further research on dairy and stroke using objective biomarkers, including studies with serial measures.
A model is discussed for the analysis of long part-through surface cracks in the walls of plate or shell structures. Such problems are formulated within the context of two dimensional plate and shell theory with the part-cracked section represented as a line-spring in the middle surface. The spring allows relative separations and rotations of the middle surface, and constitutive laws relating these discontinuities to the prevailing force and moment per unit length at any point are taken from the plane strain solution for a strip in combined tension and bending, which contains an edge crack of a corresponding depth. Prior work is reviewed and further line spring constitutive laws are discussed as appropriate to elastic analysis with thermal or residual stresses and to elastic-plastic analysis, with yielding in the ligament between the crack front and far wall in the latter case.
A method combining laser ablation cluster formation and vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) growth was developed for the synthesis of semiconductor nanowires. In this process, laser ablation was used to prepare nanometer-diameter catalyst clusters that define the size of wires produced by VLS growth. This approach was used to prepare bulk quantities of uniform single-crystal silicon and germanium nanowires with diameters of 6 to 20 and 3 to 9 nanometers, respectively, and lengths ranging from 1 to 30 micrometers. Studies carried out with different conditions and catalyst materials confirmed the central details of the growth mechanism and suggest that well-established phase diagrams can be used to predict rationally catalyst materials and growth conditions for the preparation of nanowires.