Publications by authors named "C Luca"

Purpose: Survival for childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL) has surpassed 90%, making quality of survival an important endpoint in treatment outcomes. This study examined health-related quality of life (HRQoL) trajectories in early survivorship for patients post-ALL treatment compared with a matched group of healthy peers, and explored the association of individual factors (age, sex) and treatment intensity with HRQoL outcomes.

Methods: Eighty-three paediatric patients aged 4-16 years who recently completed treatment for ALL were recruited to the study, alongside 53 age- and sex-matched healthy children.

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: Thoracic aortic aneurysms (TAAs) are potentially life-threatening medical conditions, and their etiology involves both genetic and multiple risk factors. endocarditis is one of the most frequent causes of blood culture-negative infective endocarditis (BCNIE) in patients with previous cardiac surgery. Our review aims to emphasize the importance of genetic testing in patients with thoracic aortic aneurysms but also the importance of additional testing in patients with suspected endocarditis whose blood cultures remain negative.

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Background: A proportion of individuals exposed to respiratory viruses avoid contracting detectable infection. We tested the hypothesis that early innate immune responses associate with resistance to detectable infection in close contacts of COVID-19 cases.

Methods: 48 recently-exposed household contacts of symptomatic COVID-19 cases were recruited in London, UK between May 2020 and March 2021 through a prospective, longitudinal observational study.

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Article Synopsis
  • * Research demonstrates that male rats exposed to THC during pregnancy exhibit altered dopamine activity and increased vulnerability to stress, affecting their sensorimotor functions.
  • * The study found that the HPA axis's regulation of dopamine neurons differs by sex, influencing stress responses and sensorimotor gating, with potential for therapeutic interventions to correct these disruptions.
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Fibrillary aggregation of α-synuclein in Lewy body inclusions and nigrostriatal dopaminergic neuron degeneration define Parkinson's disease neuropathology. Mutations in GBA1, encoding glucocerebrosidase, are the most frequent genetic risk factor for Parkinson's disease. However, the lack of reliable experimental models able to reproduce key neuropathological signatures has hampered the clarification of the link between mutant glucocerebrosidase and Parkinson's disease pathology.

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