Cardiovascular Disease II

Cardiovascular disease is a class of diseases that involve the heart or blood vessels, such as arteries, capillaries and veins. Cardiovascular diseases remain the biggest cause of deaths worldwide, though over the last two decades, cardiovascular mortality rates have declined in many high-income countries. At the same time, cardiovascular deaths and disease have increased at a fast rate in low- and middle-income countries. The causes of cardiovascular disease are diverse but atherosclerosis and/or hypertension are the most common ones.

There are totally 13 chapters in this book. Chapter 1 reviews the signs and symptoms of heat stress illnesses, and discusses a formula for heat stress evaluation, discusses guidelines for screening, reviews accommodations for those persons working or playing with physical incapacity and specific illness in hot environments.

Chapter 2 shows the effects of different exercises on the cardiovascular system in elderly people. Aerobic exercise is the most known and recommended for prevention, control and treatment of cardiovascular diseases, especially, the hypertension. Yet, the resistance training with low intensity has also present satisfactory results for the hypotensive effect after exercise. Thus, the aerobic and resistance exercises may have a potential protective non-pharmacological effect and also in the associated treatment for diseases such as hypertension. Chapter 3 describes recent evidence of exercise therapy in the prevention of sarcopenia, glucocorticoid caused myopathy and in case of skeletal muscle unloading.

Chapter 4 discusses the spatio-temporal evolution of simultaneously recorded voltage and calcium alternans in the heart. It also discusses whether voltage and calcium alternans can be predicted using slopes of restitution curves.

Chapter 5 deals with the evaluation of the effect of storage under various conditions on the concentrations of diagnostically most important bovine acute phase proteins.

Chapter 6 reviews the current status of HCM molecular genetics. It addresses the importance of transcriptomics for revealing new diagnostic and therapeutic biomarkers and bioinformatic approaches to improve the translation between the bench and the clinic.

Chapter 7 focuses on the role of the immune-system in glaucoma, with special attention on the activation of glial cells from the retina and the increased antigen-presenting activity in macro- and macroglia cells both, in the contralateral (normotensive) and hypertensive eyes of unilateral experimental ocular hypertension.

Chapter 8 describes the relationships between severity of hypocholesterolemia, abnormalities of plasma amino acids, severity of hypercatabolism and organ dysfunction, and extreme metabolic disruption in trauma patients with sepsis.

Chapter 9 summarizes recent advances in cyclic nucleotide signaling and its capacity to control abnormal vascular smooth muscle growth in the context of cardiovascular disease.

Chapter 10 describes classifications of endoscopic injuries to the esophagus, the incidence of such burns as well as methods to try to reduce this injury.

Chapter 11 proposes the role of autonomic nervous system (ANS), both ANS itself and after the remodeling of it, in atrial fibrillation.

In Chapter 12, an application of VCG for detection of cardiac ischemia is explained, a synthesized VCG from standard 12-lead ECG signal is constructed, and a new method to convert a VCG to ECG signals by using partial linear transformation is introduced.

Chapter 13 discusses cardiovascular disease in liver cirrhosis. The incidence of cardiovascular diseases in patients with liver cirrhosis is high, and vary according to the underlying cause of liver cirrhosis.