DICER1 syndrome is an autosomal-dominant disorder that results in malignant or benign tumors. A number of distinct pathogenic germline and somatic variants have been identified as causing multinodular goiter (MNG). The purpose of the present study was to identify and characterize the genetic cause underlying the familial form of MNG through a whole-exome sequencing (WES) analysis in an Argentine family with three affected siblings.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCongenital hypothyroidism (CH) due to thyroglobulin (TG) variants causes very low serum TG levels with normal or enlarged thyroid glands, depending on the severity of the defect, and with autosomal recessive inheritance. The purpose of this study was to functionally characterize p.Cys1281Tyr variant in the TG gene in order to increase our knowledge of the molecular mechanisms associated with CH.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThyroid peroxidase (TPO) is a membrane-bound glycoprotein located at the apical side of the thyroid follicular cells that catalyzes both iodination and coupling of iodotyrosine residues within the thyroglobulin molecule, leading to the synthesis of thyroid hormone. Variants in TPO cause congenital hypothyroidism (CH) by iodide organification defect and are commonly inherited in an autosomal recessive fashion. In the present work, we report a detailed population analysis and bioinformatic prediction of the TPO variants indexed in the Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD) v2.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThyroglobulin (TG) is a large glycosylated protein of 2767 amino acids, secreted by the thyrocytes into the follicular lumen. It plays an essential role in the process of thyroid hormone synthesis. TG gene variants lead to permanent congenital hypothyroidism.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study evaluates the impact of breast cancer (BC) in health related quality of life (HRQL) and in psychological distress (PD) during the initial phases of the disease and looks for contributing factors. A multicentric case-control study, EpiGEICAM, was carried out. Incident BC cases and age- and residence- matched controls were included.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Patient Rep Outcomes
December 2019
Drug-drug interactions are of significant concern in clinical practice in oncology, particularly in patients receiving Cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) 4/6 inhibitors, which are typically exposed to long-term regimens. This article presents the highlights from the 'First Workshop on Pharmacology and Management of CDK4/6 Inhibitors: Consensus about Concomitant Medications'. The article is structured into two modules.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Patients' psychological reactions to multigene cancer panel testing might differ compared with the single-gene testing reactions because of the complexity and uncertainty associated with the different possible results. Understanding patients' preferences and psychological impact of multigene panel testing is important to adapt the genetic counselling model.
Methods: One hundred eighty-seven unrelated patients with clinical suspicion of hereditary cancer undergoing a 25-gene panel test completed questionnaires after pretest genetic counselling and at 1 week, 3 months, and 12 months after results to elicit their preferences regarding results disclosure and to measure their cancer worry and testing-specific distress and uncertainty.
Thyroid dyshormonogenesis due to thyroglobulin (TG) gene mutations have an estimated incidence of approximately 1 in 100,000 newborns. The clinical spectrum ranges from euthyroid to mild or severe hypothyroidism. Up to now, one hundred seventeen deleterious mutations in the TG gene have been identified and characterized.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: To determine the frequency of breast cancer (BC) patients with hereditary risk features in a wide retrospective cohort of patients in Spain.
Methods: a retrospective analysis was conducted from 10,638 BC patients diagnosed between 1998 and 2001 in the GEICAM registry "El Álamo III", dividing them into four groups according to modified ESMO and SEOM hereditary cancer risk criteria: Sporadic breast cancer group (R0); Individual risk group (IR); Familial risk group (FR); Individual and familial risk group (IFR) with both individual and familial risk criteria.
Results: 7,641 patients were evaluable.
Cumulative toxicity from weekly paclitaxel (myalgia, peripheral neuropathy, fatigue) compromises long-term administration. Preclinical data suggest that the burden of critically short telomeres (< 3 kilobases, CSTs), but not average telomere length by itself, accounts for limited tissue renewal and turnover capacity. The impact of this parameter (which can be modified with different therapies) in chemotherapy-derived toxicity has not been studied.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe previously detected promising efficacy of neoadjuvant nintedanib (a multityrosine kinase inhibitor, TKI) in early HER2-negative breast cancer. In a preclinical study, we monitored stromal hypoxia with F-fluoromisonidazole-positron emission tomography (18F-FMISO-PET); we found that reoxygenation of tumors (or lack of it) during a window-of-opportunity (WoO) treatment with TKIs correlated with the benefit (or lack of it) from TKI-plus-chemotherapy combinations. We studied the predictive role of 18F-FMISO-PET for the TKI nintedanib in the neoadjuvant setting in a phase II WoO randomized trial.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Capecitabine is an active drug in metastatic breast cancer (BC). GEICAM/2003-10 is an adjuvant trial to investigate the integration of capecitabine into a regimen of epirubicin and docetaxel for node-positive early BC.
Patients And Methods: Patients with operable node-positive BC (T1-3/N1-3) were eligible.
Previous studies from our laboratory have shown that male adult offspring of stressed mothers exhibited higher levels of ionotropic and metabotropic glutamate receptors than control rats. These offspring also showed long-lasting astroglial hypertrophy and a reduced dendritic arborization with synaptic loss. Since metabolism of glutamate is dependent on interactions between neurons and surrounding astroglia, our results suggest that glutamate neurotransmitter pathways might be impaired in the brain of prenatally stressed rats.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrenatal stress (PS) strongly impacts fetal brain development and function in adulthood. In normal aging and Alzheimer's disease, there is hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis dysfunction and loss of cholinergic neurons and neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs). This study investigated whether prenatal restraint stress affects nAChR expression in the brain of adult offspring.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe have previously demonstrated that male rats exposed to stress during the last week of gestation present age-specific impairments of brain development. Since the organization of the fetal developing brain is subject to androgen exposure and prenatal stress was reported to disrupt perinatal testosterone surges, the aim of this research was to explore whether abnormal androgen concentrations during late gestation affects the morphology of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), hippocampus (HPC) and ventral tegmental area (VTA), three major areas that were shown to be affected by prenatal stress in our previous studies. We administered 10-mg/kg/day of the androgen receptor antagonist flutamide (4'nitro-3'-trifluoromethylsobutyranilide) or vehicle injections to pregnant rats from days 15-21 of gestation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Src is a non-receptor tyrosine kinase involved in signalling and crosstalk between growth-promoting pathways. We aim to investigate the relationship of active Src in response to trastuzumab of HER2-positive breast carcinomas.
Methods: We selected 278 HER2-positive breast cancer patients with (n=154) and without (n=124) trastuzumab treatment.
Exposure to a variety of stressful events during the last week of pregnancy in rats interferes with the correct progeny development, which in turn leads to delays in motor development, impaired adaptation to stressful conditions, altered sexual behaviour, learning deficits, neuronal development and brain morphology. Many of these alterations have been attributed to changes in dopamine (DA) neurotransmission and occur primarily in the mesolimbic system. We found that prenatally stressed offspring showed higher levels of cells expressing tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and that these cells were more susceptible to a neurochemical insult with 6-hydroxy-DA (6-OHDA) in adulthood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOsteopontin, a secreted phosphoglycoprotein, promotes tumor progression through binding to integrins and CD44 cell receptors. Its overexpression has been correlated with metastasis and adverse outcome in several neoplasms. In breast carcinoma, osteopontin mRNA and its splicing variant-c, a suggested marker for transformed cells, have not been extensively analyzed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe have previously demonstrated that prenatal stress (PS) exerts an impairment of midbrain dopaminergic (DA) system metabolism especially after puberty, suggesting a particular sensitivity of DA development to variations in gonadal hormonal peaks. Furthermore we demonstrated that PS alters the long term androgens profile of the rat male offspring from prepubertal to adult stages. In this work we evaluated the sexual hormones activational effects on the DA system by analysing PS effects on the dopaminergic D2-like (D2R) and on the gonadal hormones receptor levels on cortical and hippocampal areas of prepubertal and adult male offspring.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrenatal stress (PS) exerts strong impact on fetal brain development and on adult offspring brain functions. Previous work demonstrated that chronic stress alters the mRNA expression of GPM6A, a neuronal glycoprotein involved in filopodium extension. In this work, we analyzed the effect of PS on gpm6a expression and the epigenetic mechanisms involved.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSeveral studies have demonstrated that the presence of stressors during pregnancy induces adverse effects on the neuroendocrine system of the offspring later in life. In the present work, we investigated the effects of early programming on the male reproductive system, employing a prenatal stress (PS) paradigm. This study found that when pregnant dams were placed in a plastic restrainer three times a day during the last week of pregnancy, the offspring showed reduced anogenital distance and delayed testicular descent.
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