Publications by authors named "Alexandra Araujo"

Article Synopsis
  • Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA-5q) is a serious neurodegenerative condition that leads to muscle weakness and atrophy, with SMA 1 showing symptoms in infancy; early treatment improves outcomes.
  • This study assessed the safety and effectiveness of two treatments—nusinersen and onasemnogene abeparvovec (OA)—in children with SMA 1 by evaluating their motor, respiratory, and feeding functions.
  • Results showed that patients who started treatment earlier saw significantly better improvements, with 70% achieving motor milestones, no serious side effects, and most maintaining respiratory and feeding functions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a progressive and fatal X-linked neuromuscular disease. Emergent disease-modifying therapy (DMT) in nonsense Duchenne muscular dystrophy (nmDMD) has brought new perspectives to slow down functional decline in this fatal disease. To investigate if there are differences in natural history between nmDMD and other genotypes, we described a retrospective cohort analysis of 25 nonsense mutation DMD (nmDMD) boys without disease-modifying therapy, aged between 1 and 22 years, over the last 15 years (2007-2022) in a single neuromuscular center in Rio de Janeiro and use published data on DMD natural history for comparison.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a genetic neuromuscular progressive disorder that is currently treatable. The sooner the disease-modifying therapies are started, the better the prognosis. Newborn screening for SMA, which is already performed in many countries, has been scheduled to begin in the near future.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A number of studies have demonstrated the prevalence of cyberbullying in university settings. The objective of this research is to conduct a cluster analysis to categorize victims according to the nature of the behavior they have received and to examine the relationship between gender and intention to drop out. To this end, the Online Victimization Questionnaire was administered to a sample of 800 first-year students at a university in northern Spain who had opted to participate in the study.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Gestational diabetes (GD) is a risk factor for neonatal hypoglycaemia (NH), but other factors can increase this risk.

Objectives: To create a score to predict NH in women with GD.

Methods: Retrospective study of women with GD with a live singleton birth between 2012 and 2017 from the Portuguese GD registry.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Spinal muscular atrophy linked to chromosome 5 (SMA-5q) is an autosomal recessive genetic disease caused by mutations in the . SMA-5q is characterized by progressive degeneration of the spinal cord and bulbar motor neurons, causing severe motor and respiratory impairment with reduced survival, especially in its more severe clinical forms. In recent years, highly effective disease-modifying therapies have emerged, either acting by regulating the splicing of exon 7 of the gene or adding a copy of the gene through gene therapy, providing a drastic change in the natural history of the disease.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Rectal squamous cell carcinoma (rSCC) is a rare cancer (0.5% of all rectal cancers). It typically presents at an advanced stage and has a poor prognosis.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background And Purpose: X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy (X-ALD) is a peroxisomal disorder affecting particularly the nervous tissue and adrenal cortex. Adrenomyeloneuropathy (AMN) is the most frequent phenotype, although adrenal insufficiency is usually the first manifestation in male patients. We set out to describe the clinical and biochemical features, together with the clinical course of X-ALD patients, focusing particularly on endocrine dysfunction.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In the last few decades, there have been considerable improvements in the diagnosis and care of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), the most common childhood muscular dystrophy. International guidelines have been published and recently reviewed. A group of Brazilian experts has developed a standard of care based on a literature review with evidence-based graded recommendations in a two-part publication.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Although work satisfaction has been largely studied, gratitude is an emerging field within multiple sciences, including positive psychology, organizational behavior, and human resources marketing. This ex post facto study aims to characterize gratitude and understand its relations to job satisfaction in a non-probabilistic sample of 521 Portuguese workers (62.2% women), 30.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Oesophageal cancer patients have poor survival, and most are unfit for curative or systemic palliative treatment. This article aims to review the best supportive care for oesophageal cancer, focusing on the management of its most frequent or distinctive symptoms and complications.

Methods: Evidence-based review on palliative supportive care of oesophageal cancer, based on Pubmed search for relevant clinical practice guidelines, reviews and original articles, with additional records collected from related articles suggestions, references and societies recommendations.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The scarcity of medical resources is widely recognized, and therefore priority setting is inevitable. This study examines whether Portuguese healthcare professionals (physicians vs nurses): (i) share the moral guidance proposed by ethicists and (ii) attitudes toward prioritization criteria vary among individual and professional characteristics. A sample of 254 healthcare professionals were confronted with hypothetical prioritization scenarios involving two patients distinguished by personal or health characteristics.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) is a rare and aggressive malignancy. For stage I and II tumors, surgery is a curative option, but even in these cases recurrence is frequent. Practical guidelines advocate a combination of mitotane with etoposide, doxorubicin, and cisplatin as first-line therapy for metastatic adrenocortical carcinoma.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Diabetes insipidus (DI) is characterised by thirst and polydipsia with hypotonic polyuria. Several forms exist, namely, central or pituitary, nephrogenic and gestational and must be differentiated for adequate treatment. We describe the case of a 41-year-old woman chronically infected with HIV who had been recently medicated with a tenofovir-based antiretroviral treatment and who, at 22 weeks of pregnancy, presented with transient gestational DI.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Sexting has been defined as sending, receiving, or forwarding sexually explicit messages, images, or photos to others through digital platforms, and can assume more consensual or more abusive and violent forms. This study aims to explore the prevalence of abusive sexting in Portuguese adolescents and the psychological characteristics of sexting abusers in terms of emotional and behavioral problems, potential markers of psychopathy, childhood trauma and maltreatment, and different forms of aggression. A cross-sectional study was conducted with 4,281 participants, aged 12-20 years (2,264 girls and 2,017 boys), of whom 204 (4.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

(MTB) is an aerobic bacillus responsible for tuberculous infection. The the thyroid gland being affected by MTB is a rare condition. A 71-year-old woman had 6 months of slight cervical discomfort.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: We aim to describe the long term follow-up of a cohort of children exposed in utero to the Zika virus.

Methods: Descriptive study of a cohort of microcephalic children due to Zika virus. Logistic regression was used to evaluate variables associated with worse prognosis epilepsy.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study aimed to analyze the genetic variations in the survival motor neuron 1 (SMN1) gene among Brazilian patients with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) and to connect these variants with disease severity.
  • Out of 450 patients, the majority (89.3%) had a common deletion in exon 7, while others had a mix of this deletion and additional point mutations, with certain variants being more prevalent in compound heterozygous cases.
  • The research concluded that specific variants (c.460C>T and c.5C>G) were linked to milder disease forms, and that the copy number of the gene did not consistently predict disease severity among these patients.*
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Duchenne muscular dystrophy, an X-linked genetic disease, leads to progressive muscle weakness mainly in the lower limbs. Motor function tests help to monitor disease progression. Can low-cost, simple assessments help in the diagnostic suspicion of Duchenne muscular dystrophy? The authors aim to define the sensitivity of time to rise from the floor, time to walk 10meters, and time to run 10meters, evaluating them as eventual diagnostic screening tools.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Dropping out from undergraduate medical education is costly for students, medical schools, and society in general. Therefore, the early identification of potential dropout students is important. The contribution of personal features to dropout rates has merited exploration.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Allgrove or triple A syndrome (AS or AAA) is a rare autosomal recessive syndrome with variable phenotype due to mutations in gene which encodes a protein called ALADIN. Generally, it's characterized by of adrenal insufficiency in consequence of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) resistance, besides of achalasia, and alacrimia. Neurologic features are varied and have been the subject of several case reports and reviews.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Significant advances in the understanding and management of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) have occurred since the publication of international guidelines for DMD care in 2010. Our objective was to provide an evidence-based national consensus statement for multidisciplinary care of DMD in Brazil. A combination of the Delphi technique with a systematic review of studies from 2010 to 2016 was employed to classify evidence levels and grade of recommendations for the guideline.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF