Publications by authors named "Francesca Colucci"

Hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP) and ventilation-associated pneumonia (VAP) are challenging clinical conditions due to the challenging tissue penetrability of the lung. This study aims to evaluate the potential role of fosfomycin (FOS) associated with ceftazidime/avibactam (CZA) in improving the outcome in this setting. We performed a retrospective study including people with HAP or VAP treated with CZA or CZA+FOS for at least 72 h.

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Article Synopsis
  • Carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriaceae (CPE), specifically New Delhi metallo-β-lactamase (NDM) producing K. pneumoniae, pose a rising threat to global health due to limited treatment options.
  • This study evaluated the effectiveness of the meropenem and fosfomycin combination against 20 clinical isolates, finding that the combination was synergistic in 95% of the tested strains.
  • The research suggests the importance of performing in vitro synergy testing for multidrug-resistant infections, as combination therapies can provide alternatives and potentially lower antibiotic costs.
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Pharmacogenomics can identify polymorphisms in genes involved in drug pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics determining differences in efficacy and safety and causing inter-individual variability in drug response. Therefore, pharmacogenomics can help clinicians in optimizing therapy based on patient's genotype, also in psychiatric and neurological settings. However, pharmacogenetic screenings for psychotropic drugs are not routinely employed in diagnosis and monitoring of patients treated with mood stabilizers, such as carbamazepine and valproate, because their benefit in clinical practice is still controversial.

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Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory disease that is very complex and heterogeneous. If not adequately treated, RA patients are likely to manifest excess of morbidity and disability with an important impact on the quality of life. Pharmacological treatment is based on the administration of the disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs), subdivided into conventional synthetic (csDMARDs), targeted synthetic (tsDMARDs), and biological (bDMARDs).

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Fluoropyrimidines (FP) are mainly metabolised by dihydropyrimidine dehydrogenase (DPD), encoded by the gene. FP pharmacogenetics, including four polymorphisms (-PGx), is recommended to tailor the FP-based chemotherapy. These polymorphisms increase the risk of severe toxicity; thus, the -PGx should be performed prior to starting FP.

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Background Lysosphingolipids, the N-deacylated forms of sphingolipids, have been identified as potential biomarkers of several sphingolipidoses, such as Gaucher, Fabry, Krabbe and Niemann-Pick diseases and in GM1 and GM2 gangliosidoses. To date, different methods have been developed to measure various lysosphingolipids (LysoSLs) in plasma. Here, we present a novel liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) assay for a simultaneous quantification of LysoSLs (HexSph, LysoGb3, LysoGM1, LysoGM2, LysoSM and LysoSM509) in dried blood spot (DBS).

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