Frequent and long-term whole blood donation is associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular events.

Background: Thyroid abnormalities have been found intraoperatively during parathyroidectomy and have resulted in concomitant thyroidectomy. The identification of concomitant disease is important prior to primary operation in order to minimize reoperations. This study investigates the incidence of concomitant primary hyperparathyroidism (PHPT) and thyroid nodular disease in patients undergoing thyroidectomy or parathyroidectomy.Methods: We performed a retrospective review of prospectively gathered data for 621 patients who underwent thyroidectomy, parathyroidectomy, or both at Tulane Medical Center. Information obtained included initial referral, initial thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), initial parathyroid hormone (PTH), fine needle aspiration (FNA) results, ultrasound results, type of operation performed, final diagnosis, and final pathology.Results: Among the 400 patients referred primarily for thyroid disease, 13.50% underwent a thyroidectomy and parathyroidectomy (PTX) simultaneously and 10.75% received a final diagnosis of thyroid and concomitant parathyroid disease. Among the 103 patients referred primarily for parathyroid disease, 26.21% underwent a PTX and thyroidectomy and 24.27% received a final diagnosis of both thyroid and parathyroid disease. Patients referred primarily for parathyroid disease were more likely to receive a final diagnosis of both parathyroid and thyroid disease and were more likely to undergo a combined operation.Conclusions: Concomitant thyroid and parathyroid disease occur and preoperative analysis is important to avoid increased complications from reoperations.

Objective assessment in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-related fatigue has been elusive because the biological mechanisms are not well characterized. We tried to identify low-abundance plasma proteins that correlate with self-reported fatigue intensity in people living with HIV. We used plasma samples from 32 patients with HIV with varying degrees of fatigue who were either treated with nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors or treatment naïve. The plasma samples were enriched for low-abundance proteins and trypsinized. The peptides were analyzed using shotgun proteomics. Five targets correlated with severity of fatigue: apolipoprotein A-1 (ApoA1), apolipoprotein B (ApoB), histine-rich glycoprotein, alpha-1 B glycoprotein, and orosomucoid 2. These targets were selected based on total abundance and spectral count differences, and ApoA1 and ApoB were analyzed via Western blots to verify the mass spectrometry results. ApoA1 levels were higher in untreated patients, while ApoB results suggested a possible positive trend in treated patients. Further analysis is needed to identify additional low-abundance proteins and confirm already-identified proteins as potential fatigue biomarkers.