The incidence of IE episodes significantly increased over the decade of the study period, particularly among older adults. Relevant changes in clinical and microbiological profile included older patients with more comorbidity and a rise in enterococci and coagulase-negative staphylococcal infections. Adjusted mortality rates slightly declined over the study period.

7Kv channels constitute a large and ubiquitous family of membrane proteins present in both excitable and nonexcitable cells. In nonexcitable cells, their function as feedback regulators of resting V M has been proposed to participate in many cellular functions ranging from secretion to cell migration, proliferation, and apoptotic death. Kv channel genes can give rise to an even larger number of functional Kv currents, via heteromultimerization, association with accessory subunits, Kv1 .3 Channels Can Modulate Cell Proliferation during Phenotypic switch by an ion-Flux independent MechanismPilar Cidad,* Laura Jiménez-Pérez,* Daniel García-Arribas, Eduardo Miguel-Velado, Sendoa Tajada, Christian Ruiz-McDavitt, José R. López-López, † M. Teresa Pérez-García † Objective-Phenotypic modulation of vascular smooth muscle cells has been associated with a decreased expression of all voltage-dependent potassium channel (Kv)1 channel encoding genes but Kcna3 (which encodes Kv1.3 channels). In fact, upregulation of Kv1.3 currents seems to be important to modulate proliferation of mice femoral vascular smooth muscle cells in culture. This study was designed to explore if these changes in Kv1 expression pattern constituted a landmark of phenotypic modulation across vascular beds and to investigate the mechanisms involved in the proproliferative function of Kv1.3 channels. Methods and Results-Changes in Kv1.3 and Kv1.5 channel expression were reproduced in mesenteric and aortic vascular smooth muscle cells, and their correlate with protein expression was electrophysiologicaly confirmed using selective blockers. Heterologous expression of Kv1.3 and Kv1.5 channels in HEK cells has opposite effects on the proliferation rate. The proproliferative effect of Kv1.3 channels was reproduced by "poreless" mutants but disappeared when voltagedependence of gating was suppressed. Conclusion-These

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