Conclusion: Patients undergoing surgery <= 14 days had a significantly higher overall burden of high risk plaque features compared with those undergoing delayed PF-562271 CEA. However, the secondary upsurge across a range of unstable plaque features in patients undergoing CEA after >= 29 days had elapsed suggests that the relationship between recency of symptoms
and plaque histology is more complex than had been anticipated in previous studies.. (C) 2012 European Society for Vascular Surgery. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Article history: Received 18 September 2012, Accepted 19 November 2012, Available online 25 December 2012″
“Background: Many studies have evaluated histological and gene expression profiles in TIA/stroke patients after onset of symptoms, but there is limited understanding as to how these plaque related features interact before symptom onset. In particular, no studies have evaluated differential gene expression in histologically unstable (vs stable plaques) in neurologically asymptomatic patients.
Methods: Nine asymptomatic
patients had their plaques scored blindly by two independent Histopathologists Selleck NU7441 using the AHA plaque scoring system. RNA extracted from the plaques was hybridised onto a whole genome microarray. Analysis was performed using GenomeStudio (v1.0) and the DAVID bioinformatics resource (v6.7).
Results: Three plaques were histologically unstable (Grade 2/3), while six were stable (Grade 0/1). 346 differentially expressed genes (>1.3 fold, P < 0.05) were identified (293 down-regulated and 53 up-regulated) between stable and unstable plaques. Genes related to chemokine and protein signalling (pro-inflammatory/pro-apoptotic) were identified to have high enrichment scores (>1.3) and were significantly up-regulated
in unstable (asymptomatic) plaques.
Conclusion: The findings confirm the intuitively held belief that changes in chemokine and protein signalling may be associated with acute plaque disruption and precede the onset of symptoms. Once validated, these genes could therefore become targets for innovative medical treatments in the future or could help identify asymptomatic NVP-AUY922 molecular weight patients with histologically unstable plaques that would benefit from surgical intervention. (C) 2012 European Society for Vascular Surgery. European Society for Vascular Surgery. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Article history: Received 18 September 2012, Accepted 7 November 2012, Available online 21 December 2012″
“Objectives: Currently most abdominal aortic aneurysm screening programmes discharge patients with aortic diameter of less than 30 mm. However, sub-aneurysmal aortic dilatation (25 mm-29 mm) does not represent a normal aortic diameter.