We characterized age-, race-, and gender-specific distributions, and yearly rates of change of mean aortic wall thickness (MAWT), and associations between MAWT and cardiovascular risk factors in find more a multi-ethnic population-based probability sample.

Methods: Magnetic resonance imaging measurements of MAWT were performed on 2466 free-living white, black, and Hispanic adult subjects. MAWT race/ethnicity-

and gender-specific percentile values across age were estimated using regression analyses.

Results: MAWT was greater in men than in women and increased linearly with age in all the groups and across all the percentiles. Hispanic women had the thinnest and black men the thickest aortas. Black men had the highest and Bucladesine clinical trial white women the lowest age-related MAWT increase. Age, gender, ethnicity, smoking status, systolic blood pressure, low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol levels, high-density lipoprotein-cholesterol levels,

and fasting glucose levels were independent predictors of MAWT.

Conclusions: Age, gender, and racial/ethnic differences in MAWT distributions exist in the general population. Such differences should be considered in future investigations assessing aortic atherosclerosis and the effects of anti-atherosclerotic therapies.(J Vasc Surg 2011;53:950-7.)”
“Sulfatide (ST) is a sphingolipid with an important role in the central nervous system as a major component of the myelin sheath. ST contains a structurally variable Tideglusib ceramide moiety, with a fatty acid substituent of varying carbon-chain length and double-bond number. Hydroxylation at the alpha-2 carbon position of the fatty acid is found in half the population of ST molecules. Recent genetic studies of fatty acid 2-hydroxylase (FA2H) indicate that these hydroxylated sphingolipids influence myelin sheath stability. However, their distribution is unknown. Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization

imaging mass spectrometry (MALDI-IMS) enables the analysis of distinct distributions of individual ST molecular species in tissue section. We examined human cerebral cortex tissue sections with MALDI-IMS, identifying and characterizing the distributions of 14 ST species. The distribution analysis reveals that the composition ratios of non-hydroxylated/hydroxylated STs are clearly reversed at the border between white and gray matter; the hydroxylated group is the dominant ST species in the gray matter. These results suggest that hydroxylated STs are highly expressed in oligodendrocytes in gray matter and might form stable myelin sheaths. As a clinical application, we analyzed a brain with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) as a representative neurodegenerative disease. Although previous studies of AD pathology have reported that the amount of total ST is decreased in the cerebral cortex, as far as the compositional distributions of STs are concerned, AD brains were similar to those in control brains.