Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

About: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven is a education organization based out in Leuven, Belgium. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Transplantation. The organization has 61109 authors who have published 176584 publications receiving 6210872 citations.

The intestinal barrier: a fundamental role in health and disease.

Abstract: Introduction: The gastrointestinal mucosa constitutes a critical barrier where millions of microbes and environmental antigens come in close contact with the host immune system. Intestinal barrier defects have been associated with a broad range of diseases and therefore denote a new therapeutic target.Areas covered: This review is based on an extensive literature search in PubMed of how the intestinal barrier contributes to health and as a trigger for disease. It discusses the anatomy of the intestinal barrier and explains the available methods to evaluate its function. Also reviewed is the importance of diet and lifestyle factors on intestinal barrier function, and three prototypes of chronic diseases (inflammatory bowel disease, celiac disease and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease) that have been linked to barrier defects are discussed.Expert commentary: The intestinal barrier has been investigated by various methods, but correlation of results across studies is difficult, representing a major sh...

Full Study Report of Andexanet Alfa for Bleeding Associated with Factor Xa Inhibitors

Abstract: Background Andexanet alfa is a modified recombinant inactive form of human factor Xa developed for reversal of factor Xa inhibitors. Methods We evaluated 352 patients who had acute major b...

Energy Harvesting for Autonomous Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract: Wireless sensor nodes (WSNs) are employed today in many different application areas, ranging from health and lifestyle to automotive, smart building, predictive maintenance (e.g., of machines and infrastructure), and active RFID tags. Currently these devices have limited lifetimes, however, since they require significant operating power. The typical power requirements of some current portable devices, including a body sensor network, are shown in Figure 1.

Twelve-Month Prevalence of and Risk Factors for Suicide Attempts in the World Health Organization World Mental Health Surveys

Abstract: Objective: Although suicide is a leading cause of death worldwide, clinicians and researchers lack a data-driven method to assess the risk of suicide attempts. This study reports the results of an analysis of a large cross-national epidemiologic survey database that estimates the 12-month prevalence of suicidal behaviors, identifies risk factors for suicide attempts, and combines these factors to create a risk index for 12-month suicide attempts separately for developed and developing countries. Method: Data come from the World Health Organization (WHO) World Mental Health (WMH) Surveys (conducted 2001–2007), in which 108,705 adults from 21 countries were interviewed using the WHO Composite International Diagnostic Interview. The survey assessed suicidal behaviors and potential risk factors across multiple domains, including sociodemographic characteristics, parent psychopathology, childhood adversities, DSM-IV disorders, and history of suicidal behavior. Results: Twelve-month prevalence estimates of suicide ideation, plans, and attempts are 2.0%, 0.6%, and 0.3%, respectively, for developed countries and 2.1%, 0.7%, and 0.4%, respectively, for developing countries. Risk factors for suicidal behaviors in both developed and developing countries include female sex, younger age, lower education and income, unmarried status, unemployment, parent psychopathology, childhood adversities, and presence of diverse 12-month DSMIV mental disorders. Combining risk factors from multiple domains produced risk indices that accurately predicted 12-month suicide attempts in both developed and developing countries (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve = 0.74–0.80). Conclusions: Suicidal behaviors occur at similar rates in both developed and developing countries. Risk indices assessing multiple domains can predict suicide attempts with fairly good accuracy and may be useful in aiding clinicians in the prediction of these behaviors.