Our data suggest that education may be considered the best predictor of global cardiovascular risk in hypertensives and thus has to be evaluated in the strategies of hypertension and cardiovascular risk management.

This study was designed to evaluate the impact of educational status on global cardiovascular risk in a southern Italian urban population. The study population consisted of 488 consecutive outpatients aged 18 years and older. Educational status was categorized according to the number of years of formal education as follows: (1) low education group (<10 years) and (2) medium-high education group (10-15 years). In both groups, cardiometabolic comorbidities (obesity, visceral obesity, diabetes, dyslipidemia, metabolic syndrome, microalbuminuria, left ventricular hypertrophy) and global cardiovascular risk, according to international guidelines, were analyzed. Left ventricular mass index and ejection fraction by echocardiography and E/A ratio, by pulsed-wave Doppler, were calculated. The low education group was characterized by a significantly higher prevalence of patients with visceral obesity (P=.021), hypertension (P=.010), metabolic syndrome (P=.000), and microalbuminuria (P=.000) and greater global cardiovascular risk (P=.000). Significantly increased levels of microalbuminuria (P=.000) and significantly decreased values of E/A ratio (P=.000) were also detected in the low education group. Global cardiovascular risk correlated directly with waist-to-hip ratio (P=.010), microalbuminuria (P=.015), and the metabolic syndrome (P>.012) and inversely with educational status (P=.000). Education was independently (P=.000) associated with global cardiovascular risk. These data indicate a strong association between low education and cardiometabolic comorbidities suitable to influence the evolution of chronic degenerative diseases. Preventive strategies need to be more efficient and more effective in this patient population.

ADPN might be considered a key component mediating the cross-talk between adipose tissue, cardiac cells and the vasculature. Accordingly, its routine measurement might become a new target in the management of global CV risk.

This study was designed to evaluate the prevalence of cardiometabolic comorbidities and the changes in left ventricular geometry and function in 135 subjects subgrouped according to low or normal total adiponectin plasma (ADPN) levels. Left ventricular (LV) internal diameter/height, total LV mass (LVM) and LVM index (LVMI), relative wall thickness (RWT), LV ejection fraction by echocardiography and diastolic parameters by pulsed-wave Doppler were calculated. Body mass index (BMI) (p \ 0.0001), waist-to-hip ratio (p \ 0.03), triglycerides (p \ 0,001), prevalence of obesity (p \ 0.005), visceral obesity (p \ 0.003), left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) (p \ 0.001), metabolic syndrome (p \ 0.0003) and coronary artery disease (CAD) (p \ 0.003) were significantly increased and high-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (p \ 0.001) was significantly reduced in hypo-ADPN than normal-ADPN subjects. LVM, LVMI, interventricular septum thickness and RWT were significantly (p \ 0.0001) higher and left ventricular ejection fraction was significantly (p \ 0.0002) lower in hypo-ADPN than normal-ADPN patients. LVMI correlated directly with BMI (p \ 0.001), mean blood pressure (p \ 0.001), metabolic syndrome (MetS) (p \ 0.001) and inversely with ADPN (p \ 0.0001). The prevalence of LVH (p \ 0.001) and CAD (p \ 0.01) was higher in subjects with normal-ADPN and MetS, while the presence of MetS did not change this finding in hypo ADPN group. Both models of regression analysis indicated that ADPN and BMI resulted independently associated with LVMI. In conclusion, our data seem to indicate that hypoadiponectinemia might be associated with an increased prevalence both of clinical comorbidities and increased LVMI. In this subset of subjects, ADPN and BMI, more than MetS, are able to explain cardiac damage. Accordingly, ADPN might become a new target in the management of cardiometabolic risk.

A hardware implementation of an adaptive noise canceller (ANC) is presented. It has been synthesized within an FPGA, using a modified version of the least mean square (LMS) error algorithm. The results obtained so far show a significant decrease of the required gate count when compared with a standard LMS implementation, while increasing the ANC bandwidth and signal to noise (S/N) ratio. This novel adaptive noise canceller is then useful for enhancing the S/N ratio of data collected from sensors (or sensor arrays) working in noisy environment, or dealing with potentially weak signals