Bronchiectasis was associated with an independent increased risk of all-cause mortality in patients with moderate-to-severe COPD.

No abstract

None.

Severe OSA not treated with CPAP is associated with cardiovascular death in the elderly, and adequate CPAP treatment may reduce this risk.

In women, untreated OSA is associated with increased incidence of serious cardiovascular outcomes, particularly incident stroke. Adequate CPAP treatment seems to reduce this risk.

No abstract

Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is a risk factor for stroke, but little is known about the effect of OSA and continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) on the incidence of long-term, nonfatal cardiovascular events (CVE) in stroke patients.A prospective observational study was made in 223 patients consecutively admitted for stroke. A sleep study was performed on 166 of them. 31 had an apnoea/hypopnoea index (AHI) ,10 events?h -1 ; 39 had an AHI between 10 and 19 events?h -1 and 96 had an AHI o20 events?h -1 . CPAP treatment was offered when AHI was o20 events?h -1 . Patients were followed up for 7 yrs and incident CVE data were recorded.The mean¡SD age of the subjects was 73.3¡11 yrs; mean AHI was 26¡16.7 events?h ; n568) showed an increased adjusted incidence of nonfatal CVE, especially new ischaemic strokes (hazard ratio 2.87, 95% CI 1.11-7.71; p50.03), compared with patients with moderate-to-severe OSA who tolerated CPAP (n528), patients with mild disease ; n536) and patients without OSA (AHI ,10 events?h -1 ; n531). Our results suggest that the presence of moderate-to-severe OSA is associated with an increased long-term incidence of nonfatal CVE in stroke patients and that CPAP reduces the excess of incidence seen in these patients.

• Intrathymic T-cell regeneration is facilitated by human proTcells generated in vitro.• In vitro-generated human proT-cells home to the thymus, wherein they restore thymic structure.Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is followed by a period of immune deficiency due to a paucity in T-cell reconstitution. Underlying causes are a severely dysfunctional thymus and an impaired production of thymus-seeding progenitors in the host. Here, we addressed whether in vitro-derived human progenitor T (proT)-cells could not only represent a source of thymus-seeding progenitors, but also able to influence the recovery of the thymic microenvironment. We examined whether co-transplantation of in vitro-derived human proT-cells with hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) was able to facilitate HSC-derived T-lymphopoiesis posttransplant. A competitive transfer approach was used to define the optimal proT subset capable of reconstituting immunodeficient mice. Although the 2 subsets tested (proT1,1 ) showed thymus engrafting function, proT2-cells exhibited superior engrafting capacity. Based on this, when proT2-cells were coinjected with HSCs, a significantly improved and accelerated HSC-derived T-lymphopoiesis was observed. Furthermore, we uncovered a potential mechanism by which receptor activator of nuclear factor kb (RANK) ligand-expressing proT2-cells induce changes in both the function and architecture of the thymus microenvironment, which favors the recruitment of bone marrow-derived lymphoid progenitors. Our findings provide further support for the use of Notch-expanded progenitors in cellbased therapies to aid in the recovery of T-cells in patients undergoing HSCT. (Blood. 2013;122(26):4210-4219)