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Background and aims Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) is a clinical manifestation of extracoronary atherosclerosis. Many risk factors are involved in the process of PAD, but the association between serum magnesium (Mg) and PAD is not clear. Our study aimed to investigate whether serum Mg is associated with PAD incidence. Methods A total of 13,826 participants (aged 40–64 years) in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study (1987–1989) without prior PAD were included in the final analysis. Serum Mg levels were measured at visits 1 and 2. PAD was defined as an ankle brachial index less than 0.9, or hospitalization with a PAD diagnosis. Cox regression was used to calculate hazard ratios (HRs) for incidence of PAD and serum Mg. Results During a median follow-up of 24.4 years, 1364 (48.4% female) PAD events were observed. After multiple adjustment, participants in the lowest (≤1.4 mEq/L) category of serum Mg compared with the highest (≥1.8 mEq/L) ones were at higher PAD risk (HR: 1.3; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.06–1.58) (p value = 0.004). The HRs for PAD in 1.5, 1.6 and 1.7 mEq/L of serum Mg were 1.29 (95% CI: 1.08–1.54), 1.05 (95% CI: 0.89–1.24), and 1.0 (95% CI: 0.85–1.18), respectively. Conclusions Low serum Mg was independently associated with an increased prevalence of PAD in the large population-based study; further studies are needed to confirm our findings.

Doxorubicin (Dox)-induced cardiotoxicity could lead to dilated cardiomyopathy and heart failure. Our previous study reported the protective effects of Klotho against hyperglycemia-induced cardiomyopathy. We investigated whether Klotho alleviated Dox-induced cardiotoxicity. Neonatal rat ventricular cardiomyocytes and H9c2 cells were incubated with 5 μM Dox for 24 h with or without Klotho (0.1 μg/mL). Dox-induced cardiotoxicity model was approached in C57BL/6 mice. Cardiac function and serum enzyme activity, apoptosis and mitochondrial dysfunction were measured. We found that pretreatment with Klotho significantly reduced Dox-induced apoptosis in cardiomyocytes. In Dox-treated mice, Klotho also suppressed cardiac cell death and improved cardiac function. Moreover, the expression of Dynamin-related protein 1 (Drp1) was increased after Dox-treatment both in vitro and in vivo, which was related to apoptosis in cardiomyocytes. In vitro experiments, Drp1 ser 616 phosphorylation post-Dox stimulation could be significantly attenuated by Klotho or Drp1 specific inhibitor Mdivi-1. Overexpression of Drp1 in cardiomyocytes increased Dox-induced heart injury which could also be attenuated by Klotho. This study demonstrated that Klotho alleviated Dox-induced cardiotoxicity by reducing apoptosis and mitochondrial fission through down-regulating Drp1 expression. Our findings highlighted new targets for the therapy of Dox-induced cardiomyopathy.

Patients with hypertension are highly heterogeneous in treatment and prognosis. A better classification system could provide a powerful tool to identify hypertension patients with different risk of cardiovascular (CV) complications and individualize treatment regimens. We did data-driven cluster

Machine learning may be useful to characterize cardiovascular risk, predict outcomes, and identify biomarkers in population studies. To test the ability of random survival forests, a machine learning technique, to predict heart failure (HF) in comparison to standard cardiovascular risk scores. We

We aim to assess the association of carbohydrate intake proportion and the risk of atrial fibrillation (AF) incident in Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study. Participants free of AF were included. AF was ascertained from electrocardiograms, hospital discharge codes and death

Recommendations for screening or treatment of asymptomatic coronary artery disease (CAD) might be inadequate in clinical practice guidelines mainly by lacking of randomized controlled trials. We aimed to critically assess the quality of current guidelines on screening and treatment of asymptomatic

Smoking is an acknowledged risk factor for peripheral arterial disease (PAD). The pathophysiological role of smoke in PAD has been established. However, the accumulated effect of active smoking combined with family smoking exposure to PAD is not well studied. We hypothesized that accumulation of

The study aimed to seek common points and significant differences of cardiovascular risk assessment tools used in coronary heart disease (CHD) guidelines. CHD Guidelines published with recommendations on risk assessment tool from January 2007 to September 2017 were searched in MEDLINE, EMBASE, and