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Over time, a focus on blood pressure has transferred from diastolic pressure to systolic pressure. Formal analyses of differences in predictive value are scarce. Our goal of the study was whether office SBP adds prognostic information to office DBP and whether both 24‐h ambulatory SBP and 24‐h ambulatory DBP is specifically important. The authors examined 2097 participants from a population cohort recruited in Copenhagen, Denmark. Cause‐specific Cox regression was performed to predict 10‐year person‐specific absolute risks of fatal and non‐fatal cardiovascular (CV) events. Also, the time‐dependent area under the receiver operator curve (AUC) was utilized to evaluate discriminative ability. The calibration plots of the models (Hosmer‐May test) were calculated as well as the Brier score which combines (discrimination and calibration). Adding both 24‐h ambulatory SBP and 24‐h ambulatory diastolic blood pressure did not significantly increase AUC for CV mortality and CV events. Moreover, adding both office SBP and office DBP did not significantly improve AUC for both CV mortality and CV events. The difference in AUC (95% confidence interval; p‐value) was.26% (‐.2% to.73%;.27) for 10‐year CV mortality and.69% (‐.09% to 1.46%;.082) for 10‐year risk of CV events. The difference in AUC was.12% (‐.2% to.44%;.46) for 10‐year CV mortality and.04% (‐.35 to.42%;.85) for 10‐year risk of CV events. Moreover, for both CV mortality and CV events, office SBP did not improve prognostic information to office DBP. In addition, the Brier scores of office BP in both CV mortality and CV events were.078 and.077, respectively. Furthermore, the Brier scores were.077 and.078 in CV mortality and CV events of 24‐h ambulatory. For the average population as those participating in a population survey, the 10‐year discriminative ability for long‐term predictions of CV death and CV events is not improved by adding systolic to diastolic blood pressure. This finding is found for ambulatory as well as office blood pressure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Background: Information on postnatal weight gain is important for predicting later overweight and obesity, but it is unclear whether inclusion of this postnatal predictor improves the predictive performance of a comprehensive model based on prenatal and birth‐related predictors. Objectives: To compare performance of prediction models based on predictors available at birth, with and without information on infancy weight gain during the first year when predicting childhood obesity risk. Methods: A Danish register‐based cohort study including 55.041 term children born between January 2004 and July 2011 with birthweight >2500 g registered in The Children's Database was used to compare model discrimination, reclassification, sensitivity and specificity of two models predicting risk of childhood obesity at school age. Each model consisted of eight predictors available at birth, one additionally including information on weight gain during the first 12 months of life. Results: The area under the receiving operating characteristic curve increased from 0.785 (95% confidence interval (CI) [0.773‐0.798]) to 0.812 (95% CI [0.801‐0.824]) after adding weight gain information when predicting childhood obesity. Adding this information correctly classified 30% more children without obesity and 21% with obesity and improved sensitivity from 0.42 to 0.48. Specificity remained unchanged at 0.91. Conclusion: Adding infancy weight gain information improves discrimination, reclassification and sensitivity of a comprehensive prediction model based on predictors available at birth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: To compare the hazard of all-cause, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and heart failure (HF) hospitalization in carvedilol vs. metoprolol/bisoprolol/nebivolol users with COPD and concurrent HF from 2009 to 2012, and to evaluate the use and persistence in treatment of these β-blockers, their impact on the risk of COPD-related hospitalization, and the factors important for their selection.Methods and Results: Cox and logistic regression were used for both unadjusted and adjusted analyses. Carvedilol users had a higher hazard of being hospitalized for HF compared with metoprolol/bisoprolol/nebivolol users in both the unadjusted [hazard ratio (HR) 1.74; 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.65-1.83] and adjusted (HR 1.61; 95% CI 1.52-1.70) analyses. No significant differences were found for all-cause and COPD hospitalization between the two groups. Carvedilol users had a significant lower restricted mean persistence time than metoprolol/bisoprolol/nebivolol users. Patients exposed to carvedilol had an odds ratio (OR) of 1.38 (95% CI 1.23-1.56) for being hospitalized due to COPD within 60 days after redeeming the first carvedilol prescription, which was similar to that observed in metoprolol/bisoprolol/nebivolol users (OR 1.37; 95% CI 1.27-1.48). Patients with concurrent chronic kidney disease had a higher probability of receiving carvedilol (OR 1.16; 95% CI 1.04-1.29).Conclusion: Carvedilol prescription carried an increased hazard of HF hospitalization and lower restricted mean persistence time among patients with COPD and concurrent HF. Additionally, we found a widespread phenomenon of carvedilol prescription at variance with the European Society of Cardiology guidelines and potential for improving the proportion of patients treated with β-blockers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT BACKGROUND Time spent on physical activity in elementary school has been altered to improve core academics. However, little is known about the relationship between physical fitness and academic achievement. We examined the association between physical fitness and academic achievement and investigated the influence of parental socioeconomic status and ethnicity. METHODS Participants were 542 girls and 577 boys aged 13 to 15 residing in the Danish municipality of Aalborg. A watt-max cycle ergometer test was completed to evaluate physical fitness as represented by VO2max (mL·kg−1·min−1). Academic achievement was measured 1 school year later through a series of mandatory exams within the humanities, sciences, and all obligatory defined exams. Parental income and education were drawn from nationwide registers. Linear regression models were used to investigate the association. RESULTS Adjusting for ethnicity and parental socioeconomic status, the effect size of the humanities was 0.08 grad/ VO2max (95% Cl: 0.05 to 0.11) for girls and 0.06 grad/ VO2max (95% Cl:0.03 to 0.08) for boys. The effect size of the sciences was 0.09 grad/ VO2max (95% Cl:0.05 to 0.13) for girls and 0.06 grad/ VO2max (95% Cl:0.03 to 0.09) for boys. The effect size of the defined exams was 0.09 grad/ VO2max (95% Cl:0.06 to 0.11) for girls and 0.06 grad/ VO2max (95% Cl:0.03 to 0.08) for boys. CONCLUSION We found a statistically significant positive association between physical fitness and academic achievement after adjusting for ethnicity and parental socioeconomic status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

J. Neurochem. (2010) 112, 797–806. The photopigment melanopsin is expressed in a subtype of mammalian ganglion cells in the retina that project to the circadian clock in the hypothalamic suprachiasmatic nucleus to mediate non-visual light information. Melanopsin renders these retinal ganglion cells intrinsically photosensitive and the cells respond to light by a membrane depolarization and induction of the immediate early response gene Fos. Previous studies showed that the light activated melanopsin-induced signaling, the phototransduction, leading to depolarization of the membrane resembles the invertebrate opsins, which involves a Gαq/11 coupled phospholipase C activation. However, the signaling proteins mediating melanopsin-induced Fos expression are unresolved. In this study, we examined the phototransduction leading to Fos expression in melanopsin-transfected PC12 cells. A pivotal role of the extracellular signal-regulated protein kinase 1/2 (ERK1/2) was found as pharmacological blockage of this kinase suppressed the light-induced Fos expression. Illumination increased the inositol phosphate turnover and induced phosphorylation of ERK1/2 and p38 but not the c-Jun N-terminal kinase. The Gαq/11 protein inhibitor YM254890 attenuated these intracellular light responses. Our data strongly indicate that Gαq/11-mediated ERK1/2 activation is essential for expression of Fos upon illumination of melanopsin-expressing PC12 cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]