Publications by authors named "Cristea A"

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  • * A systematic review was conducted following PRISMA guidelines, analyzing research from the past ten years to investigate vitamin D's role in cartilage and osteoarthritis progression.
  • * Findings on the relationship between vitamin D and knee osteoarthritis are mixed and inconclusive, indicating the need for further research to inform treatment strategies and consider vitamin D supplementation.
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Background: To describe kidney outcomes in a cohort of children with bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD).

Methods: We assessed short-term (acute kidney injury defined using neonatal KDIGO criteria) and long-term kidney outcomes, including chronic kidney disease (defined as a GFR < 90 ml/min/1.73 m), albuminuria, and hypertension in a single-center retrospective cohort of children with BPD born between 2010 and 2020.

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Over three-quarters of Earth's surface exhibits extreme environments where life thrives under harsh physicochemical conditions. While prokaryotes have often been investigated in these environments, only recent studies have revealed the remarkable adaptability of eukaryotes, in particular fungi. This study explored the mycobiota of two meromictic hypersaline lakes, Ursu and Fără Fund, in Transylvania (Romania).

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  • The study focused on ventilator-dependent infants and children with bronchopulmonary dysplasia-associated pulmonary hypertension (BPD-PH) to assess their health outcomes.
  • Approximately 60% of the 154 subjects had pulmonary hypertension, with many requiring specific medications; those with PH tended to transition to home ventilation and discharge at older ages.
  • Despite the challenges, most subjects improved over time, successfully weaning off oxygen and ventilators by age 5, with a low mortality rate after discharge.
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  • The study aimed to assess the link between indoor air pollution and respiratory issues in children with bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) under 3 years old.
  • It involved 1,011 participants, with over 40% exposed to indoor pollutants like tobacco smoke and gas stoves, revealing higher odds of emergency visits and antibiotic use associated with secondhand smoke exposure.
  • While acute respiratory problems were related to indoor air pollution, chronic respiratory symptoms and rescue medication use showed no significant association.
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  • The study aimed to identify factors affecting when infants with severe bronchopulmonary dysplasia (sBPD) can be liberated from ventilators and successfully decannulated.
  • Results showed that on average, ventilation liberation occurred at 27 months and decannulation at 49 months, with factors like age at discharge, ventilator pressure, and respiratory readmissions influencing these timings.
  • Conclusions highlighted that individual factors predominantly drive the differences in timing, while aggressive management of gastroesophageal reflux affected decannulation timelines.
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The objective of the present study was to assess the effect of intra-articular Hyaluronic acid (HA) and Chondroitin sulfate (CS) supplementation (Hialurom Hondro (HH)) on pain symptoms and joint mobility. In total, 60 mg/mL sodium hyaluronate and 90 mg/mL CS were administered to 21 patients (17 females and 4 males) respecting the in-force requirements, excluding patients with some specific comorbidities. In addition to the clinical study (where the pain intensity (severity) and joint mobility were assessed), rheological characterization was conducted evaluating the following parameters: elastic modulus (G'), loss modulus (G″) oscillatory frequency (fc) at 0.

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Retrograde axonal neurodegeneration along the visual pathway-either direct or trans-synaptic-has already been demonstrated in multiple sclerosis (MS), as well as in compressive, vascular, or posttraumatic lesions of the visual pathway. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) can noninvasively track macular and optic nerve changes occurring as a result of this phenomenon. Our paper aimed to review the existing literature regarding hemimacular atrophic changes in the ganglion cell layer identified using OCT examination in MS patients without prior history of optic neuritis.

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Myasthenia gravis (MG) is an autoimmune disease that induces skeletal muscle weakness, affecting different muscle groups. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the cause of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), became both a diagnostic and a therapeutic challenge during the pandemic. The effects of COVID-19 are not only limited to the acute symptoms but also to the post-infectious sequelae.

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Cancer rehabilitation represents a series of measures adopted for the recovery of psychological, emotional, social, and financial functioning in the case of cancer patients. The purpose of this study is to identify the main elements of therapeutic management in the field of medical rehabilitation, as well as integrative, complementary medicine and holistic approaches that can be performed on the oncological patient. This systematic literature review follows the methodology outlined in the "Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis" ("PRISMA") statement, which is an internationally recognized and widely accepted standard.

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Lifestyle factors exert profound effects on host physiology and immunology. Disparities in cancer outcomes persist as a complex and multifaceted challenge, necessitating a comprehensive understanding of the interplay between host environment and antitumor immune responses. Determinants of health - such as obesity, diet, exercise, stress, or sleep disruption - have the potential for modification, yet some exert long-lasting effects and may challenge the notion of complete reversibility.

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Problem: Sentiment Analysis (SA) automates the classification of the sentiment of people's attitudes, feelings or reviews employing natural language processing (NLP) and computational approaches. Deep learning has recently demonstrated remarkable success in the field of SA in many languages including Arabic. Arabic sentiment analysis, however, still has to be improved, due to the complexity of the Arabic language's structure, the variety of dialects, and the lack of lexicons.

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The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic posed a serious threat to human health worldwide after the first case was identified in December 2019. Specific therapeutic options for COVID-19 are lacking; thus, the treatment of patients infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is complex in clinical practice. Despite the development of treatment options and methods to limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2, certain patients experience critical illness and numerous deaths have occurred.

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Introduction: The abnormal presence of free air in the thorax, pneumothorax, and pneumomediastinum are complications for critically ill patients suffering from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The development of these events may lead to a poor prognosis and make the management of this category of patients more difficult.

Study Design: We performed an observational retrospective study, including patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection and pneumonia who were hospitalized, to analyze the cases that developed pneumothorax or pneumomediastinum as a complication.

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Article Synopsis
  • Karst aquifers are crucial sources of drinking water but are vulnerable to contamination due to their porous nature; this study investigates the stable core microbiome in karst springs in Romania over one year.
  • Researchers used advanced techniques, including 16S rRNA gene sequencing and antibiotic resistance gene quantification, to identify a consistent bacterial community mainly consisting of Pseudomonadota, Bacteroidota, and Actinomycetota, many of which showed signs of contamination with fecal bacteria and pathogens.
  • The study also found high levels of antibiotic resistance genes linked to various pollutants and proposed specific bacterial groups as potential indicators for monitoring pollution in these sensitive water sources.
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  • - Obesity can cause inflammation in the body and make cancer spread faster, especially breast cancer spreading to the lungs.
  • - Researchers discovered that certain immune cells called monocytes work with other immune cells called neutrophils to help breast cancer spread in people who are obese.
  • - They found that these monocytes change and become more active when someone is obese, which helps in the cancer spreading process.
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  • The study focuses on outpatient respiratory outcomes in children with severe bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) who require tracheostomy and long-term mechanical ventilation.
  • Researchers analyzed data from 155 patients born between 2016 and 2021 across 12 care centers, using methods like Kaplan-Meier analysis to track key respiratory events and assess timing differences among centers.
  • Findings showed significant variability in outcomes such as age at tracheostomy, hospital discharge, and ventilator liberation across different centers, highlighting the need for further research to understand contributing factors to these differences.
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Current -omics methods allow the collection of a large amount of information that helps in describing the microbial diversity in nature. Here, and as a result of a culturomic approach that rendered the collection of thousands of isolates from 5 different hypersaline sites (in Spain, USA and New Zealand), we obtained 21 strains that represent two new Salinibacter species. For these species we propose the names Salinibacter pepae sp.

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  • Karst caves have unique environments with constant temperature, high humidity, and low nutrient levels, making them important for studying microbial diversity and biogeochemical processes.
  • The research focused on the microbial communities in Leșu Cave, utilizing techniques like 16S rRNA gene sequencing and physiological profiling to assess microbial diversity and their preferences for organic substrates.
  • Results showed that while there was overall similarity in bacterial phyla, specific sites within the cave exhibited unique bacterial communities based on environmental conditions, with nutrient sources influencing their distribution patterns.
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Introduction The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020. Facing a new and unknown virus, the entire medical community made considerable efforts to find a specific treatment, develop guidelines, and even create a vaccine. Besides all the measures taken, a wide range of complications associated with the disease increased the mortality and morbidity rates, adding more difficulty to the management of the patients.

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  • A standardized questionnaire was developed to assess respiratory control in preterm infants and children with bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) during outpatient visits, addressing the lack of valid tools for this purpose.
  • Most caregivers (86.2%) reported feeling their child's symptoms were controlled, regardless of BPD severity or history of pulmonary hypertension, indicating broad perceived stability across the population.
  • The questionnaire proved internally reliable and effectively differentiated between levels of symptom control, correlating with healthcare utilization metrics like emergency visits and hospital admissions, suggesting it may be useful for clinical and research applications.
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Unlabelled: Personalized gamification aims to address shortcomings of the one-size-fits-all (OSFA) approach in improving students' motivations throughout the learning process. However, studies still focus on personalizing to a single user dimension, ignoring multiple individual and contextual factors that affect user motivation. Unlike prior research, we address this issue by exploring multidimensional personalization compared to OSFA based on a multi-institution sample.

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