Publications by authors named "Carmen Romero-Grimaldi"

Article Synopsis
  • Caring for dependent individuals can harm family caregivers' physical and mental health, making resilience crucial for managing stress and challenges in their role.
  • The study aimed to identify factors that affect caregiver resilience, using a sample of 172 family caregivers in Spain, and found that preparedness significantly predicts resilience levels.
  • Results indicate that higher preparedness and resilience lead to lower feelings of burden, highlighting the need to enhance training and support for family caregivers to improve their well-being and care quality.
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Background: Many caregivers are insufficiently prepared, and little is known about measures that can be employed to enhance their preparedness.

Aim: The aim of this study was to explore the factors associated with caregiver preparedness and establish a predictive model including the relationship between preparedness, burden, resilience and anxiety.

Design: A cross-sectional design was used.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study aims to test the Spanish version of the Caregiver Preparedness Scale (CPS) and assess the preparedness levels of family caregivers in Spain.
  • Researchers used a descriptive and validation approach, selecting 171 caregivers through a purposive sampling method and rigorously adapting the scale for cultural context.
  • Results showed that the Spanish CPS is reliable (Cronbach's α of 0.89) and valid, with caregivers reporting average preparedness levels, feeling more equipped for physical care than for emotional or spiritual support.
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Background: Patients with chronic pain often suffer from affective disorders and cognitive decline, which significantly impairs their quality of life. In addition, many of these patients also experience stress unrelated to their illness, which can aggravate their symptoms. These nociceptive inputs are received by the hippocampus, in which maladaptive neuroplastic changes may occur in the conditions of chronic pain.

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Neural precursor cells (NPCs) are activated in central nervous system injury. However, despite being multipotential, their progeny differentiates into astrocytes rather than neurons in situ. We have investigated the role of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) in the generation of non-neurogenic conditions.

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Nitric oxide (NO) synthase (NOS) is developmentally regulated in the embryonic brain, where NO participates in cell proliferation, survival, and differentiation. In adults, NO inhibits neurogenesis under physiological conditions. This work investigates whether the NO action is preserved all along development up to adulthood or whether its effects in adults are a new feature acquired during brain maturation.

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Article Synopsis
  • Adult mammals can generate new neurons in specific brain regions, including the subventricular zone and the dentate gyrus, which are important for olfactory and spatial learning, respectively.
  • Nitric oxide (NO) negatively regulates neurogenesis in the subventricular zone, and inhibiting NO production boosts the generation of new neurons there, improving olfactory learning without affecting spatial memory.
  • The effects of NO inhibition are linked to the differential expression of epidermal growth factor receptors in precursor cells, which influences how these cells respond to NO in different brain regions.
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Nitric oxide (NO) inhibits proliferation of subventricular zone (SVZ) neural precursor cells in adult mice in vivo under physiological conditions. The mechanisms underlying this NO effect have now been investigated using SVZ-derived neural stem cells, which generate neurospheres in vitro when stimulated by epidermal growth factor (EGF). In these cultures, NO donors decreased the number of newly formed neurospheres as well as their size, which indicates that NO was acting on the neurosphere-forming neural stem cells and the daughter neural progenitors.

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The subventricular zone of the rodent brain retains the capacity of generating new neurons in adulthood. The newly formed neuroblasts migrate rostrally toward the olfactory bulb, where they differentiate as granular and periglomerular interneurons. The reported presence of differentiated neurons expressing the neuronal isoform of nitric oxide synthase (NOS) in the periphery of the neurogenic region and the organization of their varicose axons as a network in which the precursors are immersed raised the hypothesis that endogenous nitric oxide (NO) may participate in the control of neurogenesis in the subventricular zone.

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