Publications by authors named "Francesca Pietrucci"
Background: The Metabolic Exercise test data combined with Cardiac and Kidney Indexes (MECKI) score is a prognostic model to identify heart failure (HF) patients at risk for cardiovascular mortality (CVM) and urgent heart transplantation (uHT) based on 6 routine clinical parameters: hemoglobin, sodium, kidney function by the Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) equation, left ventricle ejection fraction (LVEF), percentage of predicted peak oxygen consumption (VO2) and VE/VCO2 slope.
Objectives: MECKI score must be generalizable to be considered useful: therefore, its performance was validated in a new sequence of HF patients.
Methods: Both the development (MECKI-D) and the validation (MECKI-V) cohorts were composed of consecutive HF patients with LVEF <40% able to perform a symptom-limited cardiopulmonary exercise testing.
Article Synopsis
- The study investigated the role of the APJ receptor in idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (IDC) by comparing 202 patients with IDC to 202 healthy controls.
- No mutations were found in the APJ gene, indicating it is unlikely to cause IDC.
- However, the presence of the 212A allele in patients correlated with a better prognosis for heart failure progression, suggesting it may act as a modifier gene.
Background: The 460Trp allele of the alpha-adducin gene (ADD1), which is involved in a form of salt-sensitive hypertension, has been associated with patterns of target organ damage.
Objectives: As carotid artery intima-media thickness (IMT) largely depends upon unknown genetic factors, besides being associated to conventional risk factors, we tested the association of the 460Trp allele of ADD1 with IMT in a well-characterized sample of young healthy normotensive subjects, to assess the role of ADD1 polymorphism without overlapping effects of age or already elevated blood pressure.
Methods: Anthropometric measurements, blood pressure (BP), and carotid artery wall IMT (high-resolution sonography and digitalized morphometry) were obtained in 420 healthy normotensive Caucasian university students.
Objective: Aldosterone secreting adenomas (aldosteronomas) have an unknown molecular origin. Ion channel currents are involved in signal transduction leading to aldosterone synthesis and secretion. HERG (human-ether-a-go-go-related gene) encodes for a potassium channel responsible for the outward rectifying delayed current and it is mutation prone.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To test the association of the C(-55)A polymorphism of the natriuretic peptide clearance receptor (NPRC) with blood pressure (BP), overweight/obesity, and body fat distribution in a large male adult population.
Research Methods And Procedures: The study population was from a cross-sectional and follow-up study of 787 untreated male participants in the 1994 to 1995 follow-up examination of the Olivetti Heart Study in Naples (356 of whom were examined previously in 1975). BP and anthropometric measures were taken, and biochemical assays were performed.
Objective: Abnormalities in the natriuretic peptide system could play a key role in the genesis of hypertension. We evaluated the associations between a family history of hypertension, cardiovascular phenotype and allelic variants of Npr1 and Npr3, two candidate genes that codify for natriuretic peptide receptors.
Methods: We genotyped 45 young normotensive subjects (19 males, 26.