Cachexia is a complex metabolic disorder characterized by negative energy balance due to increased consumption and lowered intake, leading to progressive tissue wasting and inefficient energy distribution. Once considered as passive bystander, metabolism is now acknowledged as a regulator of biological functions and disease progression. This shift in perspective mirrors the evolving understanding of cachexia itself, no longer viewed merely as a secondary consequence of cancer but as an active process.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe multi-staged XENON program at INFN Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso aims to detect dark matter with two-phase liquid xenon time projection chambers of increasing size and sensitivity. The XENONnT experiment is the latest detector in the program, planned to be an upgrade of its predecessor XENON1T. It features an active target of 5.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Cardiol Cardiovasc Risk Prev
June 2024
Women receive similar or greater benefits than men from Cardiac Rehabilitation (CR). However, they are less likely to participate. An integrated and gender-sensitive approach to cardiovascular disease is required to enhance the quality and experience of care for women with different cardiovascular issues throughout their lives.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSkeletal muscle atrophy is a hallmark of cachexia, a wasting condition typical of chronic pathologies, that still represents an unmet medical need. Bone morphogenetic protein (BMP)-Smad1/5/8 signaling alterations are emerging drivers of muscle catabolism, hence, characterizing these perturbations is pivotal to develop therapeutic approaches. We identified two promoters of "BMP resistance" in cancer cachexia, specifically the BMP scavenger erythroferrone (ERFE) and the intracellular inhibitor FKBP12.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMultiple viable theoretical models predict heavy dark matter particles with a mass close to the Planck mass, a range relatively unexplored by current experimental measurements. We use 219.4 days of data collected with the XENON1T experiment to conduct a blind search for signals from multiply interacting massive particles (MIMPs).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe report on a blinded analysis of low-energy electronic recoil data from the first science run of the XENONnT dark matter experiment. Novel subsystems and the increased 5.9 ton liquid xenon target reduced the background in the (1, 30) keV search region to (15.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis paper illustrates the study carried out by ARPA Lombardia to quantify the variation in daily emissions of the main pollutants and their impacts on air quality in Lombardy during the anti-COVID-19 lockdown between the end of February and the end of May 2020. A methodology for emission estimates was developed over Lombardy for this purpose and later was extended to larger areas: the Po-basin, (LIFE PREPAIR 2020) and the entire Italy (PULVIRUS 2021). In this study, the daily emissions estimates were derived by combining data from air emission inventory of Lombardy and a set of indicators that allowed to update the estimates and describe the temporal and spatial variations of the emission sources.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe selection of low-radioactive construction materials is of the utmost importance for rare-event searches and thus critical to the XENONnT experiment. Results of an extensive radioassay program are reported, in which material samples have been screened with gamma-ray spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, and Rn emanation measurements. Furthermore, the cleanliness procedures applied to remove or mitigate surface contamination of detector materials are described.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImmunotherapy with chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)–engineered T cells showed exceptional successes in patients with refractory B cell malignancies. However, first-in-human studies in solid tumors revealed unique hurdles contributing to poor demonstration of efficacy. Understanding the determinants of tumor recognition by CAR T cells should translate into the design of strategies that can overcome resistance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGhrelin is a circulating peptide hormone released by enteroendocrine cells of the gastrointestinal tract as two forms, acylated and unacylated. Acylated ghrelin (AG) binds to the growth hormone secretagogue receptor 1a (GHSR1a), thus stimulating food intake, growth hormone release, and gastrointestinal motility. Conversely, unacylated GHR (UnAG), through binding to a yet unidentified receptor, protects the skeletal muscle from atrophy, stimulates muscle regeneration, and protects cardiomyocytes from ischemic damage.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe selection of low-radioactive construction materials is of utmost importance for the success of low-energy rare event search experiments. Besides radioactive contaminants in the bulk, the emanation of radioactive radon atoms from material surfaces attains increasing relevance in the effort to further reduce the background of such experiments. In this work, we present the Rn emanation measurements performed for the XENON1T dark matter experiment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFG Ital Cardiol (Rome)
November 2021
Our review specifically focuses on virtual visit (televisit) in cardiology. Telemedicine comes as a response to the challenge caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the many possibilities offered by telemedicine, one is the videoconference modality which consists of an online consultation, where a live interaction is created in real time through a video call system: recent studies confirm the rapid increase in video consultations during the pandemic.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe report on a search for nuclear recoil signals from solar ^{8}B neutrinos elastically scattering off xenon nuclei in XENON1T data, lowering the energy threshold from 2.6 to 1.6 keV.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHerein we unveil that Hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α) directly regulates expression during myogenesis. In fact, chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChiP) and site-directed mutagenesis experiments revealed two distinct hypoxia response elements (HREs) that are specific HIF-1α binding sites on the promoter. Remarkably, a pharmacological activation of HIF-1α induced expression and enhanced muscle differentiation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: The Psychosocial Cardiological Schedule (PCS) was developed as a screening tool for patients undergoing cardiac rehabilitation (CR) to detect clinically relevant psychosocial/cognitive problems requiring psychological assessment/intervention. Filled out by a trained nurse, it classifies patients according to their need or not for a psychological interview and intervention provided by the psychologist (PCS-Yes vs. PCS-No).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSarcopenia, the decline in muscle mass and functionality during aging, might arise from age-associated endocrine dysfunction. Ghrelin is a hormone circulating in both acylated (AG) and unacylated (UnAG) forms with anti-atrophic activity on skeletal muscle. Here, we show that not only lifelong overexpression of UnAG (Tg) in mice, but also the deletion of ghrelin gene ( KO) attenuated the age-associated muscle atrophy and functionality decline, as well as systemic inflammation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLifestyle is a cornerstone of cardiovascular prevention and the process of risk communication constitutes an important step to obtain favorable changes in daily habits. Nevertheless, there is no definite consensus on how health operators should provide information on cardiovascular risk, and several models have been proposed in different settings. The current COVID-19 pandemic - with related communication strategies to reduce the spread of the disease and morbidity - may offer an interesting opportunity to reconsider communication in cardiovascular prevention: even though cardiovascular conditions are not communicable diseases, both COVID-19 and cardiac illnesses force a huge segment of the population to major lifestyle changes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDirect dark matter detection experiments based on a liquid xenon target are leading the search for dark matter particles with masses above ∼5 GeV/c^{2}, but have limited sensitivity to lighter masses because of the small momentum transfer in dark matter-nucleus elastic scattering. However, there is an irreducible contribution from inelastic processes accompanying the elastic scattering, which leads to the excitation and ionization of the recoiling atom (the Migdal effect) or the emission of a bremsstrahlung photon. In this Letter, we report on a probe of low-mass dark matter with masses down to about 85 MeV/c^{2} by looking for electronic recoils induced by the Migdal effect and bremsstrahlung using data from the XENON1T experiment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe report constraints on light dark matter (DM) models using ionization signals in the XENON1T experiment. We mitigate backgrounds with strong event selections, rather than requiring a scintillation signal, leaving an effective exposure of (22±3) tonne day. Above ∼0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCardiac rehabilitation (CR) is the subspecialty of clinical cardiology dedicated to the treatment of cardiac patients, early and in the long term after an acute event. The aim of CR is to improve both quality of life and prognosis through prognostic stratification, clinical stabilization and optimization of therapy (pharmacological and non), management of comorbidities, treatment of disability, as well as through the provision and reinforcement of secondary prevention interventions and maintenaince of adherence to treatment. The mission of CR has changed over time.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTreatment adherence is a key element for (i) improving prognosis in cardiovascular and/or high-risk patients, (ii) reducing the burden of morbidity and mortality associated with cardiovascular disease at a population level, and (iii) decreasing costs due to rehospitalizations.Promotion of adherence should embrace all pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions in cardiovascular prevention, including lifestyle and behavioral changes. In this perspective, cardiac prevention and rehabilitation programs are the most appropriate and cost-effective setting for delivering structured and multi-component interventions on patient's adherence.
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