Abstract: The amniotic fluidderived stem cells (AFSC) possess considerable advantageous characteristics including high proliferation potential, easy availability, low immunogenicity and oncogenicity，and accordance with medical ethnics. Moreover, they do not require the sacrifice of human embryos for their isolation and the cells can differentiate into all three kinds of germs. Accordingly，they initiate a new and very promising field in stem cell research and they will be a potential source of stem cells for therapies related to regeneration medicine of cardiovascular diseases. The research about the AFSC utilization in cardiovascular diseases is just started. Though there were some exciting breakthroughs, there still remain many challenges. In the article，we will discuss AFSC characteristics, influence of amniotic fluid harvesting time on stem cells, isolation and purification, emphasizing mainly on the potential of AFSC differentiation into cardiovascular cells, current situation and problems in this field.
Cardiovascular disease has caused a huge burden of disease worldwide, and the rapid advancement of smart wearable devices has provided new means for early diagnosis, real-time monitoring, and event prevention of cardiovascular disease. Smart wearable devices can be classified into various categories based on detection signals and physical carrier types. Based on an overview of the composition of such devices, this article further introduces the current cutting-edge research and related market products related to smart blood pressure monitoring, electrocardiogram monitoring, and ultrasound monitoring. It also discusses the future development and challenges of such devices, aiming to provide evidence support for the research and development of smart wearable devices in the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases in the future.
With the discovery of cardiac stem cell, the conception of the heart considered to be a terminally differentiated organ was changed. Cardiac stem cells possess the common characteristics of self-renew, clone formation and differentiating into cardiomyocyte, smooth muscle cell, and endothelial cell. Because of the properties of tissue specificity and lineage commitment, cardiac stem cells are considered to have great advantages over other stem cells in the treatment of cardiovascular disease. However, the low rate of engraftment still remains a problem to be solved. In recent years, people attempted to combine stem cell therapy with other ways, such as tissue engineering, gene therapy, exosome therapy, to cure cardiovascular diseases, aiming at finding better ways to treat the cardiovascular disease. This article is mainly for the reviewing of the mechanisms underlying the stem cell therapy and the combinatory use of new technology emerged these years.
It has been found that the incidence of cardiovascular disease in patients with lower limb amputation is significantly higher than that in normal people, and the risk of developing coronary atherosclerosis is much higher than that in other high-risk groups. Numerous studies have confirmed that high systolic and diastolic blood pressures are potential risk factors for coronary artery disease, and it has been demonstrated that the ascending aortic pressure during diastole increases after amputation. However, the relationship between lower limb amputation and coronary atherosclerosis has not been fully explained from the perspective of hemodynamic environment. Therefore, in this study, a centralized parameter model of the human cardiovascular system and a three-dimensional model of the left coronary artery were established to investigate the effect of amputation on the hemodynamic environment of the coronary artery. The results showed that the abnormal hemodynamic environment induced by amputation, characterized by factors such as increased diastolic pressure in the ascending aorta, led to a significant expansion of the low wall shear stress (WSS) region on the outer lateral aspect of the left coronary artery bifurcation during diastole. The maximum observed increase in the area of low WSS reached up to 50.5%. This abnormal hemodynamic environment elevates the risk of plaque formation in the left coronary artery. Moreover, the more severe the lower limb atrophy, the greater the risk of coronary atherosclerosis in amputees. This study preliminarily reveals the effect of lower limb amputation on the hemodynamic environment of the left coronary artery.
The peak period of cardiovascular disease (CVD) is around the time of awakening in the morning, which may be related to the surge of sympathetic activity at the end of nocturnal sleep. This paper chose 140 participants as study object, 70 of which had occurred CVD events while the rest hadn’t during a two-year follow-up period. A two-layer model was proposed to investigate whether hypnopompic heart rate variability (HRV) was informative to distinguish these two types of participants. In the proposed model, the extreme gradient boosting algorithm (XGBoost) was used to construct a classifier in the first layer. By evaluating the feature importance of the classifier, those features with larger importance were fed into the second layer to construct the final classifier. Three machine learning algorithms, i.e., XGBoost, random forest and support vector machine were employed and compared in the second layer to find out which one can achieve the highest performance. The results showed that, with the analysis of hypnopompic HRV, the XGBoost+XGBoost model achieved the best performance with an accuracy of 84.3%. Compared with conventional time-domain and frequency-domain features, those features derived from nonlinear dynamic analysis were more important to the model. Especially, modified permutation entropy at scale 1 and sample entropy at scale 3 were relatively important. This study might have significance for the prevention and diagnosis of CVD, as well as for the design of CVD-risk assessment system.
Sclerostin, as a bone-derived secreted glycoprotein, is a suppressor of Wnt signaling pathway. Recently, adverse cardiovascular events in the treatment of osteoporosis with sclerostin inhibitors have raised concerns about the association of sclerostin with atherosclerotic heart disease. Whether the role of sclerostin in atherosclerotic heart disease is harmful or beneficial is not clear. This article reviews the progress of the mechanisms of sclerostin in vascular calcification and atherosclerotic heart disease, focusing on the relationship between sclerostin and vascular calcification, the impact of its concentration changes on atherosclerotic heart disease, and the effect of sclerostin inhibitor on cardiovascular events.
As the aging proceeds worldwide, aging lung transplantation recipients have been increased dramatically. Aging population with end-stage lung diseases also have comorbidities, such as cardiovascular disease, which may impact the prognosis of lung transplantation. Recent researches on lung transplantation have explored the characteristics of aging recipients, strategy selection on transplantation and cardiovascular disease management, as well as risk factors for post-transplantation complications and death. However, researches on lung transplantation recipients with cardiac valve disease are just in the initial stage. With the advancement of transcatheter technique, more patients will be benefited. We summarized the advancement in this field and took an outlook for future clinical researches.
ObjectiveTo investigate the diagnostic value of CT-derived fractional flow reserve (CT-FFR) and fat attenuation index (FAI) based on artificial intelligence-assisted diagnostic software in coronary artery stenosis. MethodsA retrospective analysis was conducted on patients clinically suspected of coronary artery syndrome who underwent coronary computed tomography angiography at Guangdong Province Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine Hospital between June 2021 and May 2025. Patients were divided into two groups according to scanning protocols: group A underwent conventional retrospective electrocardiography-gated scanning, while group B used Flash_ChestPlin mode. Invasive coronary angiography data served as the gold standard for diagnosing vascular stenosis (stenosis rate<50% defined as negative group, ≥50% with clinical symptoms as positive group). Radiation dose was compared between the two scanning protocols. The diagnostic efficacy of CT-FFR, pericoronary FAI, and transluminal attenuation gradient (TAG) based on artificial intelligence system for coronary stenosis was analyzed, including sensitivity, specificity, and area under the curve (AUC). ResultsA total of 567 vessels from 189 patients were analyzed, including 105 males, 84 females with a mean age of (62.5±12.3) years and a mean body mass index of (24.21±3.5) kg/m2. There were 112 patients in the group A and 77 patients in the group B. The radiation dose in the group B was significantly lower than that in the group A [69.7 (58.1, 84.1) mGy·cm vs. 420.4 (338.6, 514.2) mGy·cm, P<0.001]. Significant differences in FAI and CT-FFR were observed between negative and positive groups under both scanning protocols (P<0.05), while no significant difference existed in TAG (P>0.05). In the group A, the AUC values for diagnosing stenosis were 0.925 for CT-FFR, 0.610 for FAI, and 0.516 for TAG. Corresponding values in the group B were 0.889, 0.677, and 0.548 respectively, with CT-FFR demonstrating optimal diagnostic performance. ConclusionUnder both conventional scanning and Flash scanning, the artificial intelligence-based CT-FFR demonstrates good diagnostic performance for coronary artery stenosis, and the Flash protocol significantly lowers radiation dose, indicating substantial potential for clinical application.
Objective To evaluate the efficacy of n-3 PUFAs (fish oil) for prevention of cardiovascular events. Methods Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) were searched from the following electronic databases: PubMed, EMbase, The Cochrane Library (Issue 1, 2009), CBM, and CNKI. Quality assessment and data extraction were conducted by two reviewers independently. Disagreement was resolved through discussion. All data were analyzed by using Review Manager 4.2 software. Results Five studies involving 37 689 participants met the inclusion criteria. Meta-analysis results showed that: 1) Compared with placebo, the incidence rates of the cardiovascular death (RR=0.91, 95% CI 0.84 to 0.98), cardiovascular events (RR=0.95, 95%CI 0.91 to 0.98), angina (RR=0.79, 95%CI 0.64 to 0.96), and myocardial infarction (RR=0.79, 95%CI 0.65 to 0.96) could be reduced by n-3 PUFAs (fish oil). 2) There were no significant differences in death from any cause, the hospitalization rates of cardiovascular disease, sudden death, and heart failure (RR=0.95, 95%CI 0.90 to 1.00; RR=0.97, 95%CI 0.93 to 1.02; RR=0.90, 95%CI 0.79 to 1.01; RR=0.98, 95%CI 0.91 to 1.06). 3) Compared with placebo, the incidence rates of the arrhythmia and stroke could be increased, but there were no significant differences (RR=1.14, 95%CI: 0.80 to 1.62; RR=1.12, 95%CI 0.97 to 1.30). Conclusion Compared with placebo, n-3 PUFAs (fish oil) has good effects on reducing the incidence rates of total cardiovascular events, cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, and angina pectoris, and it has the same efficacy in death from all cause, sudden death, heart failure, and the hospitalization rates of cardiovascular disease. There are no significant differences in the increased rates of arrhythmia and stroke.