Wake Forest University

About: Wake Forest University is a education organization based out in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Diabetes mellitus. The organization has 21499 authors who have published 48731 publications receiving 2246027 citations. The organization is also known as: Wake Forest College.

Benefit From Procarbazine, Lomustine, and Vincristine in Oligodendroglial Tumors Is Associated With Mutation of IDH

Abstract: Purpose Patients with 1p/19q codeleted anaplastic oligodendroglial tumors who participated in RTOG (Radiation Therapy Oncology Group) 9402 lived much longer after chemoradiotherapy (CRT) than radiation therapy (RT) alone. However, some patients with noncodeleted tumors also benefited from CRT; survival curves separated after the median had been reached, and significantly more patients lived ≥ 10 years after CRT than RT. Thus, 1p/19q status may not identify all responders to CRT. Patients and Methods Using trial data, we inquired whether an IDH mutation or germ-line polymorphism associated with IDH-mutant gliomas identified the patients in RTOG 9402 who benefited from CRT. Results IDH status was evaluable in 210 of 291 patients; 156 (74%) had mutations. rs55705857 was evaluable in 245 patients; 76 (31%) carried the G risk allele. Both were associated with longer progression-free survival after CRT, and mutant IDH was associated with longer overall survival (9.4 v 5.7 years; hazard ratio [HR], 0.59; 95% CI,...

Atrial Fibrillation and the Risk of Myocardial Infarction

Abstract: Importance Myocardial infarction (MI) is an established risk factor for atrial fibrillation (AF) However, the extent to which AF is a risk factor for MI has not been investigated Objective To examine the risk of incident MI associated with AF Design, Setting, and Participants A prospective cohort of 23 928 participants residing in the continental United States and without coronary heart disease at baseline were enrolled from the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) cohort between 2003 and 2007, with follow-up through December 2009 Main Outcomes and Measures Expert-adjudicated total MI events (fatal and nonfatal) Results Over 69 years of follow-up (median 45 years), 648 incident MI events occurred In a sociodemographic-adjusted model, AF was associated with about 2-fold increased risk of MI (hazard ratio [HR], 196 [95% CI, 152-252]) This association remained significant (HR, 170 [95% CI, 126-230]) after further adjustment for total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, smoking status, systolic blood pressure, blood pressure–lowering drugs, body mass index, diabetes, warfarin use, aspirin use, statin use, history of stroke and vascular disease, estimated glomerular filtration rate, albumin to creatinine ratio, and C-reactive protein level In subgroup analysis, the risk of MI associated with AF was significantly higher in women (HR, 216 [95% CI, 141-331]) than in men (HR, 139 [95% CI, 091-210]) and in blacks (HR, 253 [95% CI, 167-386]) than in whites (HR, 126 [95% CI, 083-193]); for interactions, P = 03 and P = 02, respectively On the other hand, there were no significant differences in the risk of MI associated with AF in older (≥75 years) vs younger ( P = 44 Conclusions and Relevance AF is independently associated with an increased risk of incident MI, especially in women and blacks These findings add to the growing concerns of the seriousness of AF as a public health burden: in addition to being a well-known risk factor for stroke, AF is also associated with increased risk of MI

Withdrawal of cerivastatin from the world market

Abstract: Cerivastatin was recently withdrawn from the market because of 52 deaths attributed to drug-related rhabdomyolysis that lead to kidney failure. The risk was found to be higher among patients who received the full dose (0.8 mg/day) and those who received gemfibrozil concomitantly. Rhabdomyolysis was 10 times more common with cerivastatin than the other five approved statins. We address three important questions raised by this withdrawal. Should we continue to approve drugs on surrogate efficacy? Are all statins interchangeable? Do the benefits outweigh the risks of statins? We conclude that decisions regarding the use of drugs should be based on direct evidence from long-term clinical outcome trials.

The ubiquity of small-world networks.

Abstract: Small-world networks, according to Watts and Strogatz, are a class of networks that are “highly clustered, like regular lattices, yet have small characteristic path lengths, like random graphs.” These characteristics result in networks with unique properties of regional specialization with efficient information transfer. Social networks are intuitive examples of this organization, in which cliques or clusters of friends being interconnected but each person is really only five or six people away from anyone else. Although this qualitative definition has prevailed in network science theory, in application, the standard quantitative application is to compare path length (a surrogate measure of distributed processing) and clustering (a surrogate measure of regional specialization) to an equivalent random network. It is demonstrated here that comparing network clustering to that of a random network can result in aberrant findings and that networks once thought to exhibit small-world properties may not...