Cardiovascular Risk and Cardiovascular Events in Patients With Chronic Myeloid Leukemia Treated With Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors.

BACKGROUND: Cardiovascular events (CVEs) have been observed in patients with chronic myeloid leukemia treated with second-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitors. PATIENTS AND METHODS: We retrospectively evaluated the incidence of CVEs on 233 consecutive patients with chronic myeloid leukemia, of which 116 were treated with imatinib, 75 with dasatinib, and 42 with nilotinib. The median follow-up was 2047, 1712, and 1773 days, respectively. RESULTS: The cumulative incidence of CVEs was 4.29%. Three events occurred during dasatinib treatment, 6 during nilotinib treatment, and none during imatinib treatment (P ≤ .001). Arterial occlusive events occurred in 2 (2.6%) of 75 patients treated with dasatinib and in 6 (14.2%) of 42 patients treated with nilotinib (P ≤ .001). Furthermore, all of them occurred in patients with high-risk (n = 2) and very high-risk (n = 6) cardiovascular risk, contributing to 4.3% of mortality. CONCLUSION: CVEs were more frequent in patients treated with second-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitors. Arterial occlusive events were more frequent in patients treated with nilotinib, with high and very high cardiovascular risk.

Association of HTRA1 rs11200638 with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in Brazilian patients.

Age-related macular degeneration is a multifactorial disease that can lead to vision impairment in older individuals. Although the etiology of age-related macular degeneration remains unknown, risk factors include age, ethnicity, smoking, hypertension, obesity, and genetic factors. Two main loci have been identified through genome-wide association studies, on chromosomes 1 and 10. Among the variants located at the 10q26 region, rs11200638, located at the HTRA1 gene promoter, has been associated with age-related macular degeneration in several populations and is considered the main polymorphism. We conducted a replication case-control study to analyze the frequency and participation of rs11200638 in the etiology of age-related macular degeneration in a sample of patients and controls from the State of São Paulo, Brazil, through polymerase chain reaction and enzymatic digestion. The frequency of the A allele was 57.60% in patients with age-related macular degeneration and 36.45% in controls (p value < 1e-07), representing a 2.369-fold higher risk factor for the disease. Both the AA and AG genotypes were observed more frequently in the age-related macular degeneration group compared to the control group (p = 1.21e-07 and 0.0357, respectively). No statistically significant results were observed after stratification in dry versus wet types or advanced versus non-advanced forms. To our knowledge, this is the first time the association between rs11200638 and overall age-related macular degeneration has been reported in South America.