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- Sundström, Johan, et al.
(författare)
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Relations of plasma matrix metalloproteinase-9 to clinical cardiovascular risk factors and echocardiographic left ventricular measures : the Framingham Heart Study.
- 2004
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Ingår i: Circulation. - 1524-4539. ; 109:23, s. 2850-6
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- BACKGROUND: Plasma levels of matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9), a key determinant of extracellular matrix degradation, are increased in heart failure and in acute coronary syndromes. We investigated cross-sectional relations of plasma MMP-9 to vascular risk factors and echocardiographic left ventricular (LV) measurements. METHODS AND RESULTS: We studied 699 Framingham Study participants (mean age, 57 years; 58% women), free of heart failure and previous myocardial infarction, who underwent routine echocardiography. We examined sex-specific distributions of LV internal dimensions (LVEDD) and wall thickness (LVWT) and sampled persons with both LVEDD and LVWT below the sex-specific median (referent, n=299), with increased LVEDD (LVEDD > or =90th percentile, n=204) and increased LVWT (LVWT > or =90th percentile, n=221) in a 3:2:2 ratio. Plasma MMP-9 was detectable in 138 persons (20%). In multivariable models, increasing heart rate (OR per SD, 1.41; 95% CI, 1.17 to 1.71) and antihypertensive treatment (OR, 1.63; 95% CI, 1.06 to 2.50) were key clinical correlates of detectable plasma MMP-9. In multivariable-adjusted models, detectable plasma MMP-9 was associated with increased LVEDD (OR, 2.84; 95% CI, 1.13 to 7.11), increased LVWT (OR, 2.54; 95% CI, 1.00 to 6.46), and higher LV mass (P=0.06) in men but not in women (OR for increased LVEDD, 1.37; 95% CI, 0.54 to 3.46; for increased LVWT, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.39 to 2.52; P=0.59 for LV mass). CONCLUSIONS: In our community-based sample, detectable plasma MMP-9 levels were associated with increased LV diastolic dimensions and increased wall thickness in men. These observations indicate that plasma MMP-9 level may be a marker for cardiac extracellular matrix degradation, a process involved in LV remodeling.
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| 2. |
- Sundström, Johan, et al.
(författare)
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Relations of plasma total TIMP-1 levels to cardiovascular risk factors and echocardiographic measures : the Framingham heart study.
- 2004
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Ingår i: Eur Heart J. - 0195-668X. ; 25:17, s. 1509-16
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- AIMS: Tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases-1 (TIMP-1) is a key regulator of extracellular matrix degradation. We examined relations of plasma total TIMP-1 to cardiovascular risk factors and echocardiographic left ventricular (LV) structure and function in a community-based sample. METHODS AND RESULTS: We studied 1069 Framingham Heart Study participants (mean age 56 years, 58% women) free of heart failure and previous myocardial infarction. Plasma TIMP-1 was higher in men compared with women, and increased with age, body mass index and total/HDL-cholesterol ratio, but decreased with alcohol intake. Plasma TIMP-1 was also directly related to smoking, diabetes and use of anti-hypertensive treatment. Adjusting for age, sex and height, plasma TIMP-1 was positively associated with LV mass, wall thickness, relative wall thickness, end-systolic diameter, and left atrial diameter and the risk of having increased LV end-diastolic diameter or increased wall thickness, and negatively correlated with fractional shortening. Additional adjustment for clinical covariates attenuated the relations of plasma TIMP-1 to most echocardiographic measures. CONCLUSIONS: In our cross-sectional investigation, plasma total TIMP-1 was related to major cardiovascular risk factors and to indices of LV hypertrophy and systolic dysfunction. This raises the possibility that cardiovascular risk factors may influence cardiovascular remodelling via extracellular matrix degradation, which may be reflected in plasma TIMP-1 levels.
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| 4. |
- Prince, J.A., et al.
(författare)
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Lack of replication of association findings in complex disease : An analysis of 15 polymorphisms in prior candidate genes for sporadic Alzheimer's disease
- 2001
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Ingår i: European Journal of Human Genetics. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1018-4813 .- 1476-5438. ; 9:6, s. 437-444
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- There is considerable enthusiasm for the prospect of using common polymorphisms (primarily single nucleotide polymorphisms, SNPs) in candidate genes to unravel the genetics of complex disease. This approach has generated a number of findings of loci which are significantly associated with sporadic Alzheimer's disease (AD). In the present study, a total of 15 genes of interest were chosen from among the previously published reports of significant association in AD. Genotyping was performed on polymorphisms within those genes (14 SNPs and one deletion) using Dynamic Allele Specific Hybridization (DASH) in 204 Swedish patients with sporadic late-onset AD and 186 Swedish control subjects. The genes chosen for analysis were, low-density lipoprotein receptor-related protein (LRP1), angiotensin converting enzyme (DCP1), alpha-2-macroglobulin (A2M), bleomycin hydrolase (BLMH), dihydrolipoyl S-succinyltransferase (DLST), tumour necrosis factor receptor superfamily member 6 (TNFRSF6), nitric oxide synthase (NOS3), presenilin 1 (PSEN1), presenilin 2 (PSEN2), butyrylcholinesterase (BCHE), Fe65 (APBB1), oestrogen receptor alpha (ESR1), cathepsin D (CTSD), methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR), and interleukin 1A (IL1A). We found no strong evidence of association for any of these loci with AD in this population. While the possibility exists that the genes analysed are involved in AD (ie they have weak effects and/or are population specific), results reinforce the need for extensive replication studies if we are to be successful in defining true risk factors in complex diseases.
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| 7. |
- Sawyer, Lena S., 1968
(författare)
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Black and Swedish: Racialization and the Cultural Politics of Belonging in
- 2000
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation looks at how racial discourses are used in contemporary Swedes' practices of belonging, their sense of their incorporation into Swedish society. I analyze verbal accounts and narratives of people "of African ancestry" living in Stockholm and those positioned in the normative and racially-unmarked category, "Swede." I study concepts of blackness and the uses to which black bodies are put in Swedish debates. Hegemonic ideas about race, nation, and belonging are investigated through attention to how dichotomous categorizations of "black" and "white" and "Swede" and "African" are produced, contested, undermined, and reproduced by individuals of various classes and generations living in Sweden. Research for this dissertation was based on participant observation and interviews with people in Stockholm, Sweden from March 1995 to May 1996. The theoretical approach used relied on an understanding of individuals as active agents in shaping the discourses and narratives through which they give meanings to their lives while, at the same time, having their lives shaped by popular and governmental discourses and practices. Governmental classificatory schemas, especially those which address immigrants and citizens, are potent sites where individuals and groups come to be thought of as and treated as particular kinds of citizens and subjects. I found that one area where these debates are most salient is in people's "re-memberings" of the national past. This is where people strategically invoke specific narratives of time and space (chronotopes) about race to bridge or expand the ideological distance between Sweden and acknowledged spaces of race, such as the United States, South Africa, and World War II Germany. Swedes of African ancestry differently negotiate, and chronotopically "route" calls for community based on the terms "black" (svart) and "African" (Afrikan), invoking ties to Africa, to diasporic black culture (heavily tinged with Black American icons and practices), and to Swedish language and traditions. African dance classes are also a space where hegemonic notions of belonging are negotiated and sometimes inverted. While official, governmental classifications obscure race as a category, in everyday practices, race is recognized, used, and fiercely debated as a criteria of belonging in Swedish society.
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
- Sawyer, Lena S., 1968
(författare)
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Routings: Race, African Diasporas, and Swedish Belonging
- 2002
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Ingår i: Transforming Anthropology. - : Wiley. - 1051-0559 .- 1548-7466. ; 11:1, s. 13-35
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper discusses the fissures and disjunctions in calls for African diasporic community in Stockholm, Sweden and shows how the "local" (which in this case is formulated as national) is tinged with a particular Swedish moral discourse in relationship to racism. A disjuncture expresses itself in stories of the national past and people. This is a past described as homogeneous and which strategically "routes" racism to specific transnational spaces and time periods that are outside of the Swedish community. Following the work of anthropologist Jacqueline Nassy Brown (1998,2000), I suggest that such "routings" push us to consider the specific manners in which "the global" is used to negotiate "local" power relations. The relevance of "routings" emerges in two manners in this paper: in how informants' narratives of the Swedish past are used strategically to comment upon and debate the historically tabooed topic of racism in Sweden, and in how a variety of African diasporic meanings get created and negotiated by Swedes of African ancestry when they discuss belonging and racism.
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