Background In the INSPIRATION-S trial, atorvastatin versus placebo was associated with a nonsignificant 16% reduction in 30-day composite of venous/arterial thrombosis or death in intensive care... Show moreBackground In the INSPIRATION-S trial, atorvastatin versus placebo was associated with a nonsignificant 16% reduction in 30-day composite of venous/arterial thrombosis or death in intensive care unit (ICU) patients with COVID-19. Thrombo-inflammatory response in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) may last beyond the first 30 days.Methods This article reports the effects of atorvastatin 20 mg daily versus placebo on 90-day clinical and functional outcomes from INSPIRATION-S, a double-blind multicenter randomized trial of adult ICU patients with COVID-19. The main outcome for this prespecified study was a composite of adjudicated venous/arterial thrombosis, treatment with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), or all-cause mortality. Functional status was assessed with the Post-COVID-19 Functional Scale.Results In the primary analysis, 587 patients were included (age: 57 [Q1–Q3: 45–68] years; 44% women). By 90-day follow-up, the main outcome occurred in 96 (33.1%) patients assigned to atorvastatin and 113 (38.0%) assigned to placebo (hazard ratio [HR]: 0.80, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.60–1.05, p = 0.11). Atorvastatin in patients who presented within 7 days of symptom onset was associated with reduced 90-day hazard for the main outcome (HR: 0.60, 95% CI: 0.42–0.86, p interaction = 0.02). Atorvastatin use was associated with improved 90-day functional status, although the upper bound CI crossed 1.0 (ORordinal: 0.64, 95% CI: 0.41–1.01, p = 0.05).Conclusion Atorvastatin 20 mg compared with placebo did not significantly reduce the 90-day composite of death, treatment with ECMO, or venous/arterial thrombosis. However, the point estimates do not exclude a potential clinically meaningful treatment effect, especially among patients who presented within 7 days of symptom onset (NCT04486508). Show less
Schroetter, I.; Bouché, N.F.; Zabl, J.; Rahmani, H.; Wendt, M.; Muzahid, S.; ... ; Wisotzki, L. 2021
The use of background quasars provides a powerful tool to probe the cool gas in the circumgalactic medium of foreground galaxies. Here, we present new observations with SINFONI and X-Shooter of... Show moreThe use of background quasars provides a powerful tool to probe the cool gas in the circumgalactic medium of foreground galaxies. Here, we present new observations with SINFONI and X-Shooter of absorbing-galaxy candidates at z = 0.7-1. We report the detection with both instruments of the Hα emission line of one sub-damped Lyman α (sub-DLA) at zabs = 0.941 87 with log N(H I) = 19.38^{+0.10}_{-0.15} towards SDSS J002133.27+004300.9. We estimate the star formation rate: SFR = 3.6 ± 2.2 M⊙ yr-1 in that system. A detailed kinematic study indicates a dynamical mass Mdyn = 109.9±0.4 M⊙ and a halo mass Mhalo = 1011.9±0.5 M⊙. In addition, we report the [O II] detection with X-Shooter of another DLA at zabs = 0.7402 with log N(H I) = 20.4 ± 0.1 towards Q0052+0041 and an estimated SFR of 5.3 ± 0.7 M⊙ yr-1. Three other objects are detected in the continuum with X-Shooter but the nature and redshift of two of these objects are unconstrained due to the absence of emission lines, while the third object might be at the redshift of the quasar. We use the objects detected in our whole N(H I)-selected SINFONI survey to compute the metallicity difference between the galaxy and the absorbing gas, δ _{H I}(X), where a positive (negative) value indicates infall (outflow). We compare this quantity with the quasar line-of-sight alignment with the galaxy's major (minor) axis, another tracer of infall (outflow). We find that these quantities do not correlate as expected from simple assumptions. Additional observations are necessary to relate these two independent probes of gas flows around galaxies. Show less
This thesis discusses solutions to several open problems in Protein-Protein Interaction (PPI) networks with the aid of Knowledge Discovery. PPI networks are usually represented as undirected graphs... Show moreThis thesis discusses solutions to several open problems in Protein-Protein Interaction (PPI) networks with the aid of Knowledge Discovery. PPI networks are usually represented as undirected graphs, with nodes corresponding to proteins and edges representing interactions among protein pairs. A large amount of available PPI data and noise within it has made the knowledge discovery process a necessary central part for the network analysis. We define Knowledge Discovery as a process of extracting informative knowledge from the huge amount of data. Much success has been achieved when the input data is represented as a set of independent instances and their attributes. But, in the context of PPI networks, there is interesting knowledge to be mined from the relationships between instances (proteins). The resulting research area is called ``Graph Mining''. Here, the input data is modeled as a graph and the output could be any type of knowledge. In this thesis, we propose several graph mining algorithms to examine structural characteristics of PPI networks and link them to the information useful for biologists, such as function or disease. Show less
