Common coronary artery occlusions in patients with myocardial infarction.

Introduction: coronary artery disease (CAD) is a significant cardiovascular disease (CVD) that affects people worldwide. This study aimed to determine the main occluded coronary arteries in patients with myocardial infarction in Najran, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Methods: a retrospective cross-sectional study conducted between March 2020 and March 2021 and involving 661 myocardial infarction patients recruited from two hospitals (King Khalid Hospital and Prince Sultan Centre for Healthcare in Najran) used sampling for enrolled patients. Patients over the age of 15 years, current residents of KSA, and diagnosed with coronary artery occlusion based on at least one identifiable coronary lesion on a coronary angiography were considered eligible. We created generalized linear mixed models to investigate patients´ clinical and coronary angiographic features and identify statistically relevant components. Results: there were 661 CAD cases in this study: 548 (82.9%) males and 113 (17.1%) females, with a mean and standard deviation (SD) age of 4.03 ± 1.370 years. Ages of the 661 participants ranged from 15 to 85, who had been diagnosed with myocardial infarction were evaluated. It was found that most of the patients were in the 55-64 age range. The majority of cases (366 (55.4%) had ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), 187 (28.3%) had non-ST-segment elevation (NSTEMI), 101 (15.3%) had acute coronary syndrome-non-ST-segment elevation (ACS-NSTEMI), and 7 (1.1%) had acute coronary syndrome-ST-segment elevation (ACS-STEMI). Conclusion: the left anterior descending artery (LAD) is the commonest lesion found in both ST-segment elevation and non-ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction patients.

Discriminatory simplex and multiplex PCR for four species of the genus Sclerotinia.

Sclerotinia sclerotiorum (Lib.) de Bary, S. minor Jagger, S. trifoliorum Eriks, and S. homoeocarpa F.T. Benn are the most relevant plant pathogenic species within the genus Sclerotinia because of their large range of economically important hosts, including tomato, peanut, alfalfa, and turfgrass, among others. Species identification based on morphological characteristics is challenging and time demanding, especially when one crop hosts multiple species. The objective of this study was to design specific primers compatible with multiplexing, for rapid, sensitive and accurate detection and discrimination among four Sclerotinia species. Specific primers were designed for the aspartyl protease gene of S. sclerotiorum, the calmodulin gene of S. trifoliorum, the elongation factor-1 alpha gene of S. homoeocarpa, and the laccase 2 gene of S. minor. The specificity and sensitivity of each primer set was tested individually and in multiplex against isolates of each species and validated using genomic DNA from infected plants. Each primer set consistently amplified DNA of its target gene only. DNA fragments of different sizes were amplified: a 264 bp PCR product for S. minor, a 218 bp product for S. homoeocarpa, a 171 bp product for S. sclerotiorum, and a 97 bp product for S. trifoliorum. These primer sets can be used individually or in multiplex for identification of Sclerotinia spp. in pure culture or from infected plants. The multiplex assay had a lower sensitivity limit than the simplex assays (0.0001 pg/µL DNA of each species). The multiplex assay developed is an accurate and rapid tool to differentiate between the most relevant plant pathogenic Sclerotinia species in a single PCR reaction.