[Personal experience with the care of children and adolescents at risk for ischemic heart disease]. / Nase zkusenosti z ordinace pro deti a adolescenty s dispozicí k ischemické chorobe srdecní.

Children and adolescents with hereditary disposition for ischemic heart disease form a substantial part of the clients of preventive cardiological surgeries for children. The authors present their results and experience they assembled by monitoring and supervising these subjects for a five-year period. During the initial examination they found in these subjects, as compared with controls, a more frequent prevalence of habits dangerous with regard to the genesis and development of ischaemic heart disease and deviations in the lipid metabolism with an atherogenic character. Arterial hypertension and protracted insulin secretion were also more frequent. The collaboration with their parents as regards adherence to a regime and therapeutic provisions was very satisfactory. After five years' supervision in children and adolescents with hereditary disposition for ischaemic heart disease the prevalence of obesity, arterial hypertension and abnormalities of blood lipid levels declined significantly. The above measures had the least effect on the impaired insulin secretion.

[The significance of myoglobin determination in the differential diagnosis of chest pain syndrome]. / Význam stanovení myoglobínu pro diferenciální diagnostiku syndromu bolesti na hrudi.

In 1984-88 the authors examined in 813 subjects with the chest pain syndrome of varying aetiology (acute myocardial infarction, myocarditis, pericarditis, vertebrogenic algic syndrome, embolism of the pulmonary artery, patients lacking detectable organic causes of pain) the trend of myoglobin serum levels. They found significantly elevated values only in patients with myocardial infarction and myocarditis whereby the two diseases differ in particular as regards the shape of the curve of myoglobin values. In chest pain with another aetiology the myoglobin levels rose only rarely or not at all. From the differential diagnostic aspect it is particularly valuable that myoglobin was not elevated in any patient with embolism of the pulmonary artery and only very rarely in angina pectoris. Where in exceptional instances the myoglobin levels were elevated in patients with other investigated causes of chest pain, this increase was always due to another basic disease (right-sided cardiac failure, renal insufficiency, neuromuscular disease), whereby for these conditions prolonged persistence of the elevated serum myoglobin values was typical and the levels were never above 8 nmol/l.

Lipid and apolipoprotein levels in patients with ischaemic heart disease. A comparative study in Plzen and Moscow.

In Plzen (Czechoslovakia) and Moscow (USSR), major lipid and apolipoprotein levels were studied in male industrial workers aged 20-60 and in men examined for the presence of ischaemic heart disease. Apolipoprotein B level and the B/B-I apolipoprotein ratio were found most suitable of all biochemical tests to distinguish patients with IHD from healthy people.

Cross-sectional study of beer consumption and blood pressure in middle-aged men.

Alcohol consumption in the week prior to examination was assessed in 352 men (average age 52.5 years) selected randomly from a cohort of employees of an industrial plant. Men drinking more than 350 g ethanol per week, largely in the form of a local beer, did not differ in respect of BP but they smoked more cigarettes and had lower serum magnesium levels and immunoreactive insulin levels than the rest of the sample. In a multiple linear (step-wise) regression analysis, body mass index, age, immunoreactive insulin two hours after glucose load and serum total cholesterol contributed directly to the BP value but the weekly ethanol intake did not. Smoking contributed negatively to the BP value after an a priori exclusion of total cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, magnesium and results of glucose tolerance tests. Only immunoreactive insulin and age were related significantly to ethanol consumption. No significant association of alcohol consumption with BP was found.