State of the art papers Lipids, blood pressure, kidney – what was new in 2011?

Abstract

The year 2011 was very interesting regarding new studies, trials and guidelines in the field of lipidology, hypertensiology and nephrology. Suffice it to mention the new European Society of Cardiology (ESC)/European Atherosclerosis Society (EAS) guidelines on the management of dyslipidaemias, American College of Cardiology Foundation (ACCF)/American Heart Association (AHA) guidelines on hypertension in the elderly, and many important trials presented among others during the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) Annual Congress in Philadelphia and the AHA Annual Congress in Orlando. The paper is an attempt to summarize the most important events and reports in the mentioned areas in the passing year.

Serum concentrations of adiponectin, leptin, resistin, ghrelin and insulin and their association with obesity indices in obese normo- and hypertensive patients – pilot study

“…Lower levels of serum ghrelin were observed in obese normotensive women, while higher levels were reported in obese women with hypertension [28,29]. Nevertheless, based on the results obtained from our study, obesity could seem to be a stronger determinant of ghrelin secretion than hypertension, since ghrelin serum levels were reduced in the patients with BMI > 35 kg/m 2 regardless of the coexistence of hypertension, although this difference did not reach statistical significance.…”

“…The patient groups were small and therefore some results could not reach or were bordering on statistical significance. Also we could not evaluate sex-dependent differences in both groups because of too few patients, especially in group C. Therefore further detailed studies based on a larger population are needed for a more comprehensive evaluation [28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36].…”

Statin intolerance – an attempt at a unified definition. Position paper from an International Lipid Expert Panel

“…Statin therapy may increase the risk of NOD; this association is observed for all investigated statins (hydrophilic or lipophilic), thus possibly representing a class effect [32,33]. At least few mechanisms may contribute to causing NOD associated with statin therapy [34].…”

“…At least few mechanisms may contribute to causing NOD associated with statin therapy [34]. In recent years there has been a debate regarding the clinical implications of this phenomenon -whether and when we should start treatment, in what groups we should continue, stop it, or reduce the statin dose, and which groups of patients are at the highest risk of NOD [33,35].…”

Association between management of metabolic syndrome and progression of early-stage chronic kidney disease: an observational cohort study

“…1 More and more studies have begun to focus on the pre-CKD stage. 2 Metabolic syndrome (MetS), characterized by abdominal obesity, hypertriglyceridemia, decreased high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, hypertension and hyperglycemia, 3 is an important issue in modern west society because of its association between the development of diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease as well as allcause mortality.…”