Publications by authors named "Camilleri A"

Aim: To compare mental health status and quality of life in lower-limb amputees versus nonamputees among participants with diabetes mellitus.

Methods: We included 38 participants with prior minor amputation (group 1) and 38 participants without amputation /history of amputation (group 2). These were interviewed twice using 2 questionnaires to screen for mental health status and quality of life (SRQ20 and EQ-5D-5L).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB) is a central nervous system depressant associated with a high risk of overdose and brief detection times in the body, leading to concerns in emergency medical scenarios.
  • A study conducted over 15 months at four emergency departments in Adelaide found that out of 1120 intoxicated patients, 309 (27.6%) tested positive for GHB, with many also using methamphetamine.
  • The results showed significant central nervous system depression in GHB-positive patients, with higher positivity rates in females, and indicated that higher blood concentrations of GHB correlated with increased severity of toxicity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 (ALDH2) deficiency affects 35% to 45% of East Asians and 8% of the world population. ALDH2 is the second enzyme in the ethanol metabolism pathway. The common genetic variant allele has a glutamic acid-to-lysine substitution at position 487 (E487K) that reduces the enzyme activity, resulting in an accumulation of acetaldehyde after ethanol consumption.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A 3-pyrazolinyl-naphthalimide with a benzo-15-crown-5 receptor operates as a wavelength-reconfigurable dual-output logic gate. Excited with 365 nm light, Na and Mg are detected by orange and white light emission, respectively.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Psychological home is an understudied concept within community psychology, especially focused on migrants. Previous literature on psychological home found a positive relationship with well-being and resilience in general populations and migrants. Studying psychological home in migrants may provide important tools to buffer various stresses associated with migration.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

For robots that can provide physical assistance, maintaining synchronicity of the robot and human movement is a precursor for interaction safety. Existing research on collaborative HRI does not consider how synchronicity can be affected if humans are subjected to cognitive overloading and distractions during close physical interaction. Cognitive neuroscience has shown that unexpected events during interactions not only affect action cognition but also human motor control Gentsch et al.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Following the unprecedented outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), educators and students have shifted from conventional face-to-face lectures to fully virtual sessions that were delivered via video conferencing software. This research investigates the facilitating conditions and the students' perceptions toward using these interactive resources to continue their learning journey. The data was gathered through a structured questionnaire among 777 students in tertiary education.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: The reported incidence of titanium miniplate removal after orthognathic surgery varies widely, making delivery of risk information to patients problematic. This variation relates to potential biases introduced during the study design, for example, with the pooling of different patient types, creating heterogeneous study samples. This study reduces sampling bias by limiting the cohort to only consecutive orthognathic cases.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Chronic eosinophilic leukemia-not otherwise specified (CEL-NOS) is a rare, aggressive, fatal disease characterized by blood eosinophilia and dysfunction of organs infiltrated with eosinophils. Clinically, the disease manifests with weight loss, cough, weakness, diarrhea, and multi-organ dysfunction that is unresponsive to therapy. We developed a one-time gene therapy for CEL-NOS using an adeno-associated virus (AAV) expressing an anti-eosinophil monoclonal antibody (AAVrh.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - Australia lacks a formal drug early warning system, but the South Australian Drug Early Warning System (SADEWS) is an informal collaboration that shares information about drug trends and public health impacts.
  • - SADEWS gathers data from various sources, including police, medical research, and user reports, to quickly identify new drugs and harmful patterns of use, which allows for timely public warnings.
  • - The initiative aims to reduce health risks related to drug use, such as overdoses and hospital visits, leading to lower healthcare costs, all while being politically safe and low-cost to operate.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The identification of compounds which protect the double-membrane of mitochondrial organelles from disruption by toxic confomers of amyloid proteins may offer a therapeutic strategy to combat human neurodegenerative diseases. Here, we exploited an extract from the marine brown seaweed (PPE) as a vital source of natural bioactive compounds to protect mitochondrial membranes against insult by oligomeric aggregates of the amyloidogenic proteins amyloid-β (Aβ), α-synuclein (α-syn) and tau, which are currently considered to be major targets for drug discovery in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson's disease (PD). We show that PPE manifested a significant inhibitory effect against swelling of isolated mitochondria exposed to the amyloid oligomers, and attenuated the release of cytochrome from the mitochondria.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Eosinophils are specialized granulocytic effector cells that store and release highly active mediators used in immune defense. Eosinophils are also implicated in the pathogenesis of allergic disorders, including eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE), a chronic disorder characterized by infiltration of eosinophils into the esophagus and release of mediators that damage tissue, resulting in gastrointestinal morbidity, food impaction, and dysphagia. Treatment with elimination diets and/or topical corticosteroid therapy slow disease progression, but are complicated by adverse effects, limited compliance, and loss of response to therapy.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: ED presentations because of illicit use of psychotropic drugs and pharmaceuticals result in significant medical harm and resource consumption. Patient assessment is complicated by the regular emergence of new psychoactive substances, difficulties associated with their identification and a lack of information about their effects. Here we report the protocol for the Emergency Department Admission Blood Psychoactive Testing (EDABPT) programme, an observational study utilising clinical data capture and definitive drug identification to assess the medical impact and patterns of illicit drug use in the community, and their geographic and temporal fluctuations.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Studies on the amyloidogenic N-terminal domain of the E. coli HypF protein (HypF-N) have contributed significantly to a detailed understanding of the pathogenic mechanisms in neurodegenerative diseases characterised by the formation of misfolded oligomers, by proteins such as amyloid-β, α-synuclein and tau. Given that both cell membranes and mitochondria are increasingly recognised as key targets of oligomer toxicity, we investigated the damaging effects of aggregates of HypF-N on mitochondrial membranes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The need to classify, score and describe diabetic foot ulcerations is needed for accurate clinical documentation. An agreed wound classification can improve communication between health care professionals, and improve ease of discussion regarding potential outcomes. This study aimed to determine the inter-rater reliability between four validated wound classification systems.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Guidelines remain unclear over whether patients with early stage oral cancer without overt neck disease benefit from upfront elective neck dissection (END), particularly those with the smallest tumours.

Methods: We conducted a randomised trial of patients with stage T1/T2 N0 disease, who had their mouth tumour resected either with or without END. Data were also collected from a concurrent cohort of patients who had their preferred surgery.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Misfolding and aggregate formation by the tau protein has been closely related with neurotoxicity in a large group of human neurodegenerative disorders, which includes Alzheimer's disease. Here, we investigate the membrane-active properties of tau oligomers on mitochondrial membranes, using minimalist in vitro model systems. Thus, exposure of isolated mitochondria to oligomeric tau evoked a disruption of mitochondrial membrane integrity, as evidenced by a combination of organelle swelling, efflux of cytochrome c and loss of the mitochondrial membrane potential.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Over the past decade, the potential impact of cognitive bias in forensic science has instigated much discussion and debate between academics, scientists and those in the justice sector. Evidence of bias influencing subjective decision-making across a range of forensic disciplines has been described in the literature. Forensic service organisations are being urged to address cognitive bias in subjective decision-making by designing processes or procedures to limit access to (irrelevant) contextual information or reduce dependence on cognitive functions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Aggregation of the amyloid-forming α-synuclein (αS) protein is closely associated with the etiology of Parkinson's disease (PD), the most common motor neurodegenerative disorder. Many studies have shown that soluble aggregation intermediates of αS, termed oligomers, permeabilize a variety of phospholipid membranes; thus, membrane disruption may represent a key pathogenic mechanism of αS toxicity. Given the centrality of mitochondrial dysfunction in PD, we therefore probed the formation of ion-permeable pores by αS oligomers in planar lipid bilayers reflecting the complex phospholipid composition of mitochondrial membranes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The authors investigated the effectiveness of aggregating over potential noncontingent collective action ("If X people all do Y action, then Z outcomes will be achieved") to increase prosocial behavior. They carried out 6 experiments encouraging 4 different prosocial activities and found that aggregating potential benefits over 1,000 people produced more prosocial intentions and actions than aggregating over 1 person did. The authors further showed that aggregating potential benefits over 1,000 people produced more prosocial intentions than aggregating benefits over 1,000 days did.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF