Chest Dynamic MRI as Early Biomarker of Respiratory Impairment in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Patients: A Pilot Study.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neuromuscular progressive disorder characterized by limb and bulbar muscle wasting and weakness. A total of 30% of patients present a bulbar onset, while 70% have a spinal outbreak. Respiratory involvement represents one of the worst prognostic factors, and its early identification is fundamental for the early starting of non-invasive ventilation and for the stratification of patients.

Adolescent Mental Health: A Focus on Psychiatric Counseling from the Emergency Room of an Italian University Hospital in the Five Years from 2019 to 2023.

Recent studies have revealed increasingly worse and more complex mental health conditions in young people, which is reflected in a growing trend in emergency room (ER) visits for acute psychopathological symptoms (APSs). This phenomenon has become exacerbated in recent decades, with a peak in the post-pandemic period. To better characterize the phenomenon, we investigated the change in the rate and type of ER counseling requests provided at the Child Neuropsychiatry Unit of the University Hospital of Bari, Italy over the period between 2019 and 2023 for subjects younger than 18 years old.

Technical note: Semiautomated targeted postmortem computed tomography angiography of the pulmonary arteries using a robotic system.

Introduction: To better depict vascular lesions on postmortem computed tomography (PMCT), whole-body postmortem computed tomography angiography (PMCTA) can be used in forensic diagnostics. Targeted angiography, in which only a specific vessel is filled with contrast agent, might help in cases of traumatic changes that render whole-body PMCTA impossible. Moreover, in targeted PMCTA, the contrast agent does not affect the haptics of any other organs.

Social Introversion Personality Trait as Predictor of Internalizing Symptoms in Female Adolescents with Gender Dysphoria.

The personality trait of social introversion refers to the individual inclination toward the inner/outer world. Moreover, adolescents who experience Gender Dysphoria (GD) can be involved in relationship conflicts with family, peers, and friends and experience stigmatization and rejection from society. This leads higher distress in females which are more sensitive to this kind of feelings.

Processed foods and diet quality in pregnancy may affect child neurodevelopment disorders: a narrative review.

Objective: To review the evidence on the association between maternal exposure to ultra-processed food (UPF) categories, UPF diet items, and overall diet quality, as assessed by recognized dietary indices, and neurodevelopmental outcomes in offspring.

Methods: PubMed, MEDLINE, EMBASE, Scopus, Ovid, and Scholar databases were searched for original articles on female gestational exposure to UPF categories, individual elements of the UPF diet, or indices of diet quality, in relation to outcomes regarding their offspring's neurocognitive development, according to neuropsychometric and behavioral scales, anthropometric/psychomotor indices, and symptoms/diagnosis of neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs).

Results: Fourteen articles were selected and underwent the quantitative analysis.

Ultra-processed food consumption and nutritional frailty in older age.

Frailty is a multidisciplinary public health issue and nutrition is key concern. Given the scientific consistency about inflammation as shared pathway to poor nutrition and frailty, food processing seems a suitable target to gain evidence in frailty prevention nutrition settings. This study aimed to assess diet in relation to nutritional frailty using the NOVA classification.

Implication of COVID-19 Pandemic on Adolescent Mental Health: An Analysis of the Psychiatric Counseling from the Emergency Room of an Italian University Hospital in the Years 2019-2021.

Introduction: Although the COVID-19 pandemic had profound consequences on youths' mental health, few data are available about its longitudinal implications.

Method: In this study, from 655 counseling requests by the Emergency Room (ER) of the University Hospital of Bari, we retrospectively examined 380 requests for psychiatric counseling of pediatric subjects, during the pre-pandemic, the first pandemic, and the second pandemic wave of COVID-19.

Results: We found a significant upward trend between 2019 and 2021 for the counseling requests for acute psychopathological symptoms ( = 1.

Multimodal anatomy of the human forniceal commissure.

Ambiguity surrounds the existence and morphology of the human forniceal commissure. We combine advanced in-vivo tractography, multidirectional ex-vivo fiber dissection, and multiplanar histological analysis to characterize this structure's anatomy. Across all 178 subjects, in-vivo fiber dissection based on the Human Connectome Project 7 T MRI data identifies no interhemispheric connections between the crura fornicis.

Altered sleep intensity upon DBS to hypothalamic sleep-wake centers in rats.

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) has been scarcely investigated in the field of sleep research. We hypothesize that DBS onto hypothalamic sleep- and wake-promoting centers will produce significant neuromodulatory effects and potentially become a therapeutic strategy for patients suffering severe, drug-refractory sleep-wake disturbances. We aimed to investigate whether continuous electrical high-frequency DBS, such as that often implemented in clinical practice, in the ventrolateral preoptic nucleus (VLPO) or the perifornical area of the posterior lateral hypothalamus (PeFLH), significantly modulates sleep-wake characteristics and behavior.

Biomechanical study of shaft fracture with the butterfly fragment: software simulation.

The specific traumatic mechanism that leads to the formation of the butterfly fragment is debated in literature. The aim of the present study is to analyze the biomechanics of fractures with a "butterfly" fragment, using a software that simulates the movement of the lines of force (and related iso-displacement points) that occur on the bone, when traumatic forces are applied on it. We have shown that the formation of the butterfly fragment derives from the application of three forces (compression, torsion and bending) with the bending force that acts by increasing the curvature of the long bone.

Economic evaluation of subcutaneous versus intravenous immunoglobulin therapy in chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy: a real-life study.

Objectives: Chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP) is an acquired peripheral neuropathy of immunological origin with a clinical presentation and course that are extremely variable. The therapeutic approach generally includes corticosteroid drugs, intravenous immunoglobulins (IVIGs) or plasmapheresis alone or in combination as first line therapy, and immunosuppressants. In 2014 the Italian regulatory agency included subcutaneous immunoglobulins (SCIGs) in the list of off-label drugs reimbursed by the national health service.

Feasibility, technique and accuracy of ultrasound-guided transurethral injections into the urinary sphincter of female cadavers: proof of concept.

Background: The injection of muscle precursor cells (MPC) into the external urinary sphincter muscle (EUS) is a promising therapeutic option for regenerative treatment of stress urinary incontinence (SUI). The objective of the present project was to conduct a pre-clinical trial to investigate the feasibility and accuracy of ultrasound (US) guided, transurethral injections into the EUS of female cadavers.

Methods: This is a prospective, anatomical, interventional and radiological cadaveric laboratory investigation.

A cone-beam X-ray computed tomography data collection designed for machine learning.

Unlike previous works, this open data collection consists of X-ray cone-beam (CB) computed tomography (CT) datasets specifically designed for machine learning applications and high cone-angle artefact reduction. Forty-two walnuts were scanned with a laboratory X-ray set-up to provide not only data from a single object but from a class of objects with natural variability. For each walnut, CB projections on three different source orbits were acquired to provide CB data with different cone angles as well as being able to compute artefact-free, high-quality ground truth images from the combined data that can be used for supervised learning.

Automated dissection of permanent effects of hippocampal or prefrontal lesions on performance at spatial, working memory and circadian timing tasks of C57BL/6 mice in IntelliCage.

To evaluate permanent effects of hippocampal and prefrontal cortex lesion on spatial tasks, lesioned and sham-operated female C57BL/6 mice were exposed to a series of conditioning schemes in IntelliCages housing 8-10 transponder-tagged mice from each treatment group. Sequential testing started at 51-172days after bilateral lesions and lasted for 154 and 218days in two batches of mice, respectively. Spontaneous undisturbed behavioral patterns clearly separated the three groups, hippocampals being characterized by more erratic hyperactivity, and strongly impaired circadian synchronization ability.

Reference values for coagulation assessment in full-term newborns.

Background: Most data in the literature report reduced coagulation activities in the first few days of life with respect to adults and the effects of these differences must be considered when diagnosing and treating hemostatic disorders. The management of pediatric population is further complicated by the lack of age-related reference values and by the unreliability of currently-used hemostatic tests, while an accurate interpretation of results is required to reduce the cases of inappropriate investigation. Thromboelastography (TEG®) is a point-of-care test that provides an efficient analysis of the dynamic viscoelastic properties of whole blood that may provide superior evaluation and management of coagulopathies in newborn.

Prefrontal inputs to the amygdala instruct fear extinction memory formation.

Persistent anxiety after a psychological trauma is a hallmark of many anxiety disorders. However, the neural circuits mediating the extinction of traumatic fear memories remain incompletely understood. We show that selective, in vivo stimulation of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC)-amygdala pathway facilitated extinction memory formation, but not retrieval.

Glutamatergic mechanisms associated with stress-induced amygdala excitability and anxiety-related behavior.

The neural factors underlying individual differences in susceptibility to chronic stress remain poorly understood. Preclinical studies demonstrate that mouse strains vary greatly in anxiety-related responses to chronic stress in a manner paralleled by differential stress-induced changes in glutamatergic signaling in the basolateral amygdala (BLA). Previous work has also shown that alterations in the amygdala gene expression of the GluN1 NMDA and the GluK1 kainate receptors are associated with stress-induced alterations in anxiety-like behavior in the C57BL/6J mouse strain.

Spontaneous behavior in the social homecage discriminates strains, lesions and mutations in mice.

Background: Modern molecular genetics create a rapidly growing number of mutant mouse lines, many of which need to be phenotyped behaviorally. Poor reliability and low efficiency of traditional behavioral tests have prompted the development of new approaches to behavioral phenotyping, such as fully automated analysis of behavior in the homecage.

New Method: We asked whether the analysis of spontaneous behavior during the first week in the social homecage system IntelliCage could provide useful prescreening information before specialized and time consuming test batteries are run.

"Modeling ancient Egyptian embalming": radiological assessment of experimentally mummified human tissue by CT and MRI.

Objective: To assess changes in different tissues during the process of artificial mummification by natron using computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and to translate the results to image interpretation in paleoradiological studies of ancient mummies.

Materials And Methods: A human lower limb (LL) was amputated from a female donor 24 h post-mortem and mummified by artificial natron (54 % NaCl, 16 % Na2SO4, 18 % Na2CO3 12 % NaHCO3) in ancient Egyptian style. The LL was kept in a fume hood at 16-25 °C and 30-75 % relative humidity.