Arlo White, left, listens as Rebecca Lowe speaks during a joint NBC and English Premier League (EPL) press conference on Tuesday, April 16, 2013 in New York. All 380 EPL games will be televised live by NBC and its networks next season as part of a multiyear contract. White will be the lead play-by-play voice during coverage and Lowe host the telecasts beginning Aug. 17. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)
Arlo White, left, listens as Rebecca Lowe speaks during a joint NBC and English Premier League (EPL) press conference on Tuesday, April 16, 2013 in New York. All 380 EPL games will be televised live by NBC and its networks next season as part of a multiyear contract. White will be the lead play-by-play voice during coverage and Lowe host the telecasts beginning Aug. 17. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)
Richard Scudamore, chief executive of the English Premier League, speaks during an interview at NBC studios on Tuesday, April 16, 2013 in New York. Scudamore and NBC executives announced that all 380 English Premier League games will be televised live by NBC and its networks next season as part of a multiyear contract. The telecasts begin Aug. 17 and will be carried on NBC, NBC Sports Network, Telemundo, Mun2 and various digital outlets. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)
Richard Scudamore, left, chief executive of the English Premier League, listens as Mark Lazarus, NBC Sports chairman, speaks during a press conference on Tuesday, April 16, 2013 in New York. Lazarus announced that all 380 English Premier League games will be televised live by NBC and its networks next season as part of a multiyear contract. The telecasts begin Aug. 17 and will be carried on NBC, NBC Sports Network, Telemundo, Mun2 and various digital outlets. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)
NEW YORK (AP) ? All 380 English Premier League games will be televised live by NBC and its networks next season as part of a multiyear contract.
The telecasts begin Aug. 17 and will be carried on NBC, NBC Sports Network, Telemundo, Mun2, other NBC television properties, and various digital outlets.
NBC is scheduled to air 20 games, with 154 on NBC Sports Network; 76 of the telecasts will be in Spanish on Telemundo or Mun2; and 22 will be shown on other NBC Sports Group channels.
Windows for the national telecasts are 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. ET Saturdays on NBCSN, and 12:30 p.m. on NBC; 8 a.m. Sundays on NBCSN and 11 a.m. on that channel and Telemundo; and 2:30 p.m. ET Mondays on NBCSN.
In addition, NBC is making available free to all carriers of NBC Sports Network a package of all EPL games played at 10 a.m. ET on Saturdays ? the primary starting time in the Premier League. Called Premier League Extra Time, it is similar to DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket.
"I can't wait for Aug. 17 to come and we get started," NBC Sports Group Chairman Mark Lazarus said Tuesday. "It's about making this one of the key pillars of our landscape."
The deal comes at a time when Fox and ESPN also have heavy involvement in soccer. But the world's most popular league in the world's most popular sport will belong solely to NBC for the next three years at a rights fee of $250 million.
Arlo White, who currently calls MLS games on NBCSN, will handle play-by-play from England. Former Premier League players Lee Dixon and Graeme Le Saux will handle analysis. Former England national team star Gary Lineker will be a special contributor.
Rebecca Lowe, a fixture on European soccer coverage in Europe, will host a studio show from NBC's international broadcast center in Stamford, Conn. But all game production will be done on-site in England, with NBC using England-based announcers on games White doesn't work.
"They went all in with us," Jon Miller, NBC Sports president of programming, said of the EPL, "and we're all in with them."
FRESNO, Calif. (AP) ? A bus carrying visitors from Yosemite National Park crashed on a main highway south of the park, leaving 16 people injured, the California Highway Patrol said Sunday.
The bus was about 40 miles south of the park when it went off Highway 41 and over and embankment about 6 p.m. Saturday.
The patrol's Merced dispatch office described it as a minor injury crash, and said the 16 people were taken to local hospitals.
The bus was carrying 17 people, including a driver, when the crash occurred near local road 630.
No more police information was immediately available, but the Fresno Bee quoted officers as saying the bus was returning from a visit to the park when the bus driver, who was traveling about 40 mph, lost control of the bus.
Patrol Sgt. Edward Greene said the bus rolled onto an embankment and several passengers were thrown to the driver's side of the bus. It eventually came to a stop after hitting a tree.
"If the tree wasn't there to stop the bus, it would have continued down the ravine," Greene said.
The newspaper said the injured people ? the majority of whom were elderly ? were taken to three area hospitals with minor to moderate injuries.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California's pension fund for teachers made official on Friday its plan to divest holdings in firearms companies whose weapons are illegal in the state.
The California State Teachers' Retirement System will now sell holdings in two publicly traded gunmakers Sturm, Ruger & Co and Smith & Wesson Holding Corp. The investments are worth about $3 million.
The divestment plan has been in play since January at the $161.5 billion pension fund after State Treasurer Bill Lockyer advanced it in response to the mass shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in December.
Lockyer sits on the board of the fund, best known as Calstrs, and also pressed it to divest holdings in manufacturers of high-capacity ammunition magazines that are illegal for the general public in California.
The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting involved a type of semi-automatic rifle banned in California and sparked a national debate regarding gun control with some pension funds flexing their financial clout to weigh in on the issue.
Lockyer also sits on the board of the California Public Employees' Retirement System, the biggest U.S. public pension fund. Its investment committee voted in February to divest holdings in Sturm Ruger and Smith & Wesson in a move affecting about $5 million in investments.
Contact: Rachael Zaleski mcpmedia@elsevier.com 215-239-3658 Elsevier Health Sciences
Results of systematic review of 13 controlled studies reported in Mayo Clinic Proceedings
Rochester, MN, April 12, 2013 L-carnitine significantly improves cardiac health in patients after a heart attack, say a multicenter team of investigators in a study published today in Mayo Clinic Proceedings. Their findings, based on analysis of key controlled trials, associate L-carnitine with significant reduction in death from all causes and a highly significant reduction in ventricular arrhythmias and anginal attacks following a heart attack, compared with placebo or control.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. Although many of the therapies developed in recent decades have markedly improved life expectancy, adverse cardiovascular events such as ventricular arrhythmias and angina attacks still occur frequently after an acute myocardial infarction (heart attack).
It is known that during ischemic events L-carnitine levels are depleted. Investigators sought to determine the effects of targeting cardiac metabolic pathways using L-carnitine to improve free fatty acid levels and glucose oxidation in these patients. By performing a systematic review and meta-analysis of the available studies published over several decades, they looked at the role of L-carnitine compared with placebo or control in patients experiencing an acute myocardial infarction.
L-carnitine is a trimethylamine which occurs in high amounts in red meat and is found in certain other foods, and is also widely available as an over-the-counter nutritional supplement which is claimed to improve energy, weight loss, and athletic performance. Its potential role in treating heart disease was first reported in the late 1970s.
A comprehensive literature search yielded 153 studies, 13, published from 1989-2007, were deemed eligible. All the trials were comparison trials of L-carnitine compared with placebo or control in the setting of acute myocardial infarction.
This systematic review of the 13 controlled trials in 3,629 patients, involving 250 deaths, 220 cases of new heart failure, and 38 recurrent heart attacks, found that L-carnitine was associated with:
Significant 27% reduction in all-cause mortality (number needed to treat 38)
Highly significant 65% reduction in ventricular arrhythmias (number needed to treat 4)
Significant 40% reduction in the development of angina (number needed to treat 3)
Reduction in infarct size
There were numerically fewer myocardial reinfarctions and heart failure cases associated with L-carnitine, but this did not reach statistical significance.
First author James J. DiNicolantonio, PharmD, Wegmans Pharmacy, Ithaca, NY, observes, "Although therapies for acute coronary syndrome (ACS), including percutaneous coronary intervention, dual antiplatelet therapy, b-blockers (BBs), statins, angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEIs), omega-3 fatty acids, and cardiac rehabilitation, have markedly improved clinical outcomes, adverse cardiovascular (CV) events still occur too frequently after ACS. One promising therapy for improving cardiac health involves using L-carnitine to improve free fatty acid levels and glucose oxidation."
"The potential mechanisms responsible for the observed beneficial impact of L-carnitine in acute myocardial infarction are likely multifactorial and may, in part, be conferred through the ability of L-carnitine to improve mitochondrial energy metabolism in the heart by facilitating the transport of long-chain fatty acids from the cytosol to the mitochondrial matrix, where b-oxidation occurs, removing toxic fatty acid intermediates, reducing ischemia induced by long-chain fatty acid concentrations, and replenishing depleted carnitine concentrations seen in ischemic, infarcted, and failing myocardium," says DiNicolantonio.
L-carnitine is proven to be safe and is readily available over the counter. The investigators agree that the overall results of this meta-analysis support the potential use of L-carnitine in acute myocardial infarction and possibly in secondary coronary prevention and treatment, including angina. They advocate for a larger randomized, multicenter trial to be performed to confirm these results in the modern era of routine revascularization and other intensive medical therapies following acute myocardial infarction. But, says DiNicolantonio, "L-carnitine therapy can already be considered in selected patients with high-risk or persistent angina after acute myocardial infarction who cannot tolerate treatment with ACE inhibitors or beta blockers, considering its low cost and excellent safety profile."
These findings may seem to contradict those reported in a study published earlier this month in Nature Medicine by Robert A. Koeth and others (Koeth, R. A. et al. Nature Med. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nm.3145), which demonstrated that metabolism by intestinal microbiota of dietary L-carnitine produced trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) and accelerated atherosclerosis in mice. They also noted that omnivorous human subjects produced more TMAO than did vegans or vegetarians following ingestion of L-carnitine, and suggested a possible direct link between L-carnitine, gut bacteria, TMAO, and atherosclerosis and risk of ischemic heart disease.
"The Nature Medicine paper is of interest," agrees senior investigator Carl J. Lavie, M.D.,FACC,FACP,FCCP, Medical Director of the Cardiac Rehabilitation and Prevention Center at the John Ochsner Heart and Vascular Institute at the University of Queensland School of Medicine in New Orleans, "but the main study reported there was in animals, and unlike our study, lacks hard outcomes." He also notes that "there are various forms of 'carnitine' and our relatively large meta-analysis specifically tested L-carnitine on hard outcomes in humans who had already experienced acute myocardial infarction."
###
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Contact: Rachael Zaleski mcpmedia@elsevier.com 215-239-3658 Elsevier Health Sciences
Results of systematic review of 13 controlled studies reported in Mayo Clinic Proceedings
Rochester, MN, April 12, 2013 L-carnitine significantly improves cardiac health in patients after a heart attack, say a multicenter team of investigators in a study published today in Mayo Clinic Proceedings. Their findings, based on analysis of key controlled trials, associate L-carnitine with significant reduction in death from all causes and a highly significant reduction in ventricular arrhythmias and anginal attacks following a heart attack, compared with placebo or control.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. Although many of the therapies developed in recent decades have markedly improved life expectancy, adverse cardiovascular events such as ventricular arrhythmias and angina attacks still occur frequently after an acute myocardial infarction (heart attack).
It is known that during ischemic events L-carnitine levels are depleted. Investigators sought to determine the effects of targeting cardiac metabolic pathways using L-carnitine to improve free fatty acid levels and glucose oxidation in these patients. By performing a systematic review and meta-analysis of the available studies published over several decades, they looked at the role of L-carnitine compared with placebo or control in patients experiencing an acute myocardial infarction.
L-carnitine is a trimethylamine which occurs in high amounts in red meat and is found in certain other foods, and is also widely available as an over-the-counter nutritional supplement which is claimed to improve energy, weight loss, and athletic performance. Its potential role in treating heart disease was first reported in the late 1970s.
A comprehensive literature search yielded 153 studies, 13, published from 1989-2007, were deemed eligible. All the trials were comparison trials of L-carnitine compared with placebo or control in the setting of acute myocardial infarction.
This systematic review of the 13 controlled trials in 3,629 patients, involving 250 deaths, 220 cases of new heart failure, and 38 recurrent heart attacks, found that L-carnitine was associated with:
Significant 27% reduction in all-cause mortality (number needed to treat 38)
Highly significant 65% reduction in ventricular arrhythmias (number needed to treat 4)
Significant 40% reduction in the development of angina (number needed to treat 3)
Reduction in infarct size
There were numerically fewer myocardial reinfarctions and heart failure cases associated with L-carnitine, but this did not reach statistical significance.
First author James J. DiNicolantonio, PharmD, Wegmans Pharmacy, Ithaca, NY, observes, "Although therapies for acute coronary syndrome (ACS), including percutaneous coronary intervention, dual antiplatelet therapy, b-blockers (BBs), statins, angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEIs), omega-3 fatty acids, and cardiac rehabilitation, have markedly improved clinical outcomes, adverse cardiovascular (CV) events still occur too frequently after ACS. One promising therapy for improving cardiac health involves using L-carnitine to improve free fatty acid levels and glucose oxidation."
"The potential mechanisms responsible for the observed beneficial impact of L-carnitine in acute myocardial infarction are likely multifactorial and may, in part, be conferred through the ability of L-carnitine to improve mitochondrial energy metabolism in the heart by facilitating the transport of long-chain fatty acids from the cytosol to the mitochondrial matrix, where b-oxidation occurs, removing toxic fatty acid intermediates, reducing ischemia induced by long-chain fatty acid concentrations, and replenishing depleted carnitine concentrations seen in ischemic, infarcted, and failing myocardium," says DiNicolantonio.
L-carnitine is proven to be safe and is readily available over the counter. The investigators agree that the overall results of this meta-analysis support the potential use of L-carnitine in acute myocardial infarction and possibly in secondary coronary prevention and treatment, including angina. They advocate for a larger randomized, multicenter trial to be performed to confirm these results in the modern era of routine revascularization and other intensive medical therapies following acute myocardial infarction. But, says DiNicolantonio, "L-carnitine therapy can already be considered in selected patients with high-risk or persistent angina after acute myocardial infarction who cannot tolerate treatment with ACE inhibitors or beta blockers, considering its low cost and excellent safety profile."
These findings may seem to contradict those reported in a study published earlier this month in Nature Medicine by Robert A. Koeth and others (Koeth, R. A. et al. Nature Med. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nm.3145), which demonstrated that metabolism by intestinal microbiota of dietary L-carnitine produced trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) and accelerated atherosclerosis in mice. They also noted that omnivorous human subjects produced more TMAO than did vegans or vegetarians following ingestion of L-carnitine, and suggested a possible direct link between L-carnitine, gut bacteria, TMAO, and atherosclerosis and risk of ischemic heart disease.
"The Nature Medicine paper is of interest," agrees senior investigator Carl J. Lavie, M.D.,FACC,FACP,FCCP, Medical Director of the Cardiac Rehabilitation and Prevention Center at the John Ochsner Heart and Vascular Institute at the University of Queensland School of Medicine in New Orleans, "but the main study reported there was in animals, and unlike our study, lacks hard outcomes." He also notes that "there are various forms of 'carnitine' and our relatively large meta-analysis specifically tested L-carnitine on hard outcomes in humans who had already experienced acute myocardial infarction."
###
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?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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Public release date: 12-Apr-2013
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