ABSTRACT
Early diagnosis and treatment is the key to improve the prognosis and reduce the disability of Wilson′s disease. Conventional magnetic resonance imaging sequences are difficult to detect early brain lesions in Wilson′s disease, especially in preclinical patients. Quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) is a recently developed magnetic resonance post-processing technique, which is very sensitive to magnetic metal deposition in the brain. QSM can be used for quantitative analysis of metal deposition in the basal ganglia of Wilson′s disease and is expected to be an imaging technique for early diagnosis and condition assessment of Wilson′s disease.
ABSTRACT
Objective To explore the long-term predictive value of serum concentration of N-terminal prosoma brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) in the early acute coronary syndrome (ACS). Methods The 164 patients firstly hospitalized and finally diagnosed as acute myocardial infarction (AMI) were selected, and then the serum concentration of NT-proBNP was determined in less than 12 hours. According to the 75 percentage points of serum concentration of NT-proBNP, the patients were divided into two groups: low concentration group (n = 123) and high concentration group (n = 41 ). The major adverse cardiac events (MACEs) were followed and compared at one month, six months and twelve months between low group and high group. Results At 1-, 6-, 12-month follow-up, the odds ratio (OR) of death event were 4.1, 5.6 and 4.0 in high group respectively, and the nonfatal heart failure occurred in 4, 4 and 7 patients in high group. Multiple factor logistic regression analysis showed that NT-proBNP was an independent risk factor of the MACEs at different periods including short time, middle time and long time in ACS patients (P＜0. 05). Conclusions NT-proBNP is a strong predictor of the long-term MACEs in patients with early ACS.