St George's, University of London

About: St George's, University of London is a education organization based out in London, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Health care. The organization has 4953 authors who have published 11675 publications receiving 574153 citations. The organization is also known as: SGUL & St George's Hospital Medical School.

Identifying patients with chronic kidney disease from general practice computer records

Abstract: Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is an important predictor of end-stage renal disease, as well as a marker of increased mortality. The New Opportunities for Early Renal Intervention by Computerised Assessment (NEOERICA) project aimed to assess whether people with undiagnosed CKD who might benefit from early intervention could be identified from GP computer records.

Physical activity in adolescents and adults with congenital heart defects: individualized exercise prescription

Abstract: Studies in patients with congenital heart disease (CHD) indicate that the majority of individuals participating in such programs achieve significant improvement of their exercise capacity and psychological state.1 The challenge is to ensure safe participation in regular physical activity (PA) in order to avoid the detrimental effects associated with sedentary life style. ### Why are physical activity recommendations for adolescents and adults with congenital heart disease needed? The improved surgical techniques and clinical care of children with CHD have led to a considerable increase in the population of patients with CHD who reach adulthood, and the number of adults is expected to grow at a rate of 5% per year.2 Cardiac rehabilitation programs in patients with CHD have shown improvements in peak-VO2.3–5 Additionally, regular physical exercise is associated with lower risk of future obesity and ischaemic heart disease.3 Paradoxically, only a minority of CHD patients (19%) receives formal PA advice,4 and are often encouraged towards a sedentary lifestyle as a result of overprotection,5 and uncertainty as to which physical activities and with what intensity should be recommended.1 This is of particular importance when one considers that children with CHD are more likely to be overweight because of physical inactivity compared with children without CHD.6 On the other end of the spectrum, young patients may reject exercise limitations and engage in unsafe sporting practices. Existing exercise guidelines are of limited value for the majority of patients with CHD because they focus predominantly on competitive athletes.7 Consequently, they cover less than 1% of the CHD population and applying these recommendations to leisure time activities would be too restrictive. In addition, in all current recommendations, the decision making process is primarily based on the individual anatomic lesions. As a result formulating recommendations becomes complex and the documents are long and impractical ( Figure 1 ).8 …

Directional dominance on stature and cognition in diverse human populations

Abstract: Homozygosity has long been associated with rare, often devastating, Mendelian disorders, and Darwin was one of the first to recognize that inbreeding reduces evolutionary fitness. However, the effect of the more distant parental relatedness that is common in modern human populations is less well understood. Genomic data now allow us to investigate the effects of homozygosity on traits of public health importance by observing contiguous homozygous segments (runs of homozygosity), which are inferred to be homozygous along their complete length. Given the low levels of genome-wide homozygosity prevalent in most human populations, information is required on very large numbers of people to provide sufficient power. Here we use runs of homozygosity to study 16 health-related quantitative traits in 354,224 individuals from 102 cohorts, and find statistically significant associations between summed runs of homozygosity and four complex traits: height, forced expiratory lung volume in one second, general cognitive ability and educational attainment (P < 1 × 10(-300), 2.1 × 10(-6), 2.5 × 10(-10) and 1.8 × 10(-10), respectively). In each case, increased homozygosity was associated with decreased trait value, equivalent to the offspring of first cousins being 1.2 cm shorter and having 10 months' less education. Similar effect sizes were found across four continental groups and populations with different degrees of genome-wide homozygosity, providing evidence that homozygosity, rather than confounding, directly contributes to phenotypic variance. Contrary to earlier reports in substantially smaller samples, no evidence was seen of an influence of genome-wide homozygosity on blood pressure and low density lipoprotein cholesterol, or ten other cardio-metabolic traits. Since directional dominance is predicted for traits under directional evolutionary selection, this study provides evidence that increased stature and cognitive function have been positively selected in human evolution, whereas many important risk factors for late-onset complex diseases may not have been.

Histone Deacetylase 3 Is Critical in Endothelial Survival and Atherosclerosis Development in Response to Disturbed Flow

Abstract: Background— Histone deacetylase 3 (HDAC3) is known to play a crucial role in the differentiation of endothelial progenitors. The role of HDAC3 in mature endothelial cells, however, is not well understood. Here, we investigated the function of HDAC3 in preserving endothelial integrity in areas of disturbed blood flow, ie, bifurcation areas prone to atherosclerosis development. Methods and Results— En face staining of aortas from apolipoprotein E-knockout mice revealed increased expression of HDAC3, specifically in these branching areas in vivo, whereas rapid upregulation of HDAC3 protein was observed in endothelial cells exposed to disturbed flow in vitro. Interestingly, phosphorylation of HDAC3 at serine/threonine was observed in these cells, suggesting that disturbed flow leads to posttranscriptional modification and stabilization of the HDAC3 protein. Coimmunoprecipitation experiments showed that HDAC3 and Akt form a complex. Using a series of constructs harboring deletions, we found residues 136 to 206...