Publications by authors named "Franco Martinez"

Background: Oral fluid contains analytes that may be reflective of health and welfare in pig herds. Additionally, oral fluid collection is a more convenient and cost-effective option when compared to blood sampling, increasing the potential of oral fluid as a non-invasive alternative tool. While a growing number of biomarkers can be measured in porcine oral fluid, the use of these analytes to compare commercial herds in veterinary practice is still limited.

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Metritis affects 5-20% of cows after parturition, negatively impacting animal welfare and the profitability of dairy farms, increasing culling rates and costs, and decreasing productivity and reproduction rates. This study compared the results of a comprehensive biochemical panel consisting of 25 salivary and 31 serum analytes between healthy cows ( = 16) and cows with metritis ( = 12). Descriptive parameters such as depression, rectal temperature, body condition score (BCS), heart rate, respiratory rate, mucous color, ruminal motility, vaginal discharge, milk production, and complete hematology analyses were also assessed for comparative purposes.

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Introduction: Long COVID, or post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC), manifests as persistent and often debilitating symptoms enduring well beyond the initial COVID-19 infection. This disease is especially worrying in children since it can seriously alter their development. Presently, a specific diagnostic test or definitive biomarker set for confirming long COVID is lacking, relying instead on the protracted presence of symptoms post-acute infection.

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Article Synopsis
  • Impella devices provide mechanical support for patients with cardiogenic shock or those at high risk during PCI, but anticoagulation protocols for these patients are unclear and complicated by the use of heparin solutions.
  • A study with 41 patients using a modified unfractionated heparin (UFH) protocol aimed to evaluate bleeding and thrombotic complications, finding an overall bleeding rate of 29.2% and a thrombosis rate of 4.9%.
  • The findings suggest that using a lower initial UFH dose while targeting specific anticoagulation levels can effectively balance therapeutic needs and reduce the complexity of treatment calculations.
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The aim of this study was to evaluate the changes in the serum and salivary inflammatory markers induced by Diabetes mellitus (DM) in dogs and to assess the possible confounding effect of gingivitis. A panel of 13 cytokines was measured in the serum and saliva of dogs diagnosed with DM and compared with healthy dogs without gingivitis (control group 1; CG1) and dogs with gingivitis but otherwise healthy (control group 2; CG2). The results of the present study showed statistically significantly higher levels of IL-8, KC-like and MCP1 in the serum of dogs with DM compared to CG1 dogs.

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  • * Researchers sampled pigs from 18 farms at various ages, collecting a total of 504 OF samples, and analyzed them for 11 biomarkers including cortisol and haptoglobin.
  • * Findings showed that OF collected with ropes was dirtier and had higher levels of certain biomarkers compared to sponge-collected samples, indicating that sponges may be the better method for obtaining cleaner samples for analysis.
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Canine obesity is the most common nutritional disorder and is associated with decreased quality of life and longevity as well as comorbidities including cardiorespiratory, endocrine, oncologic, or orthopaedic disorders. Ferritin is a major acute-phase protein in dogs, increasing during inflammation; however, it could also be affected by other conditions, including trauma, iron metabolism dysregulations, neoplasia, or hypoxia. Higher ferritin levels have been reported in obese humans, but ferritin has not been explored in canine obesity.

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Acute phase proteins have been used as tools for the diagnosis, monitoring, and prognosis of several diseases in domestic animals. However, the dynamics of these proteins in infection by , the causative agent of Chagas disease in dogs, is still unknown. The aim of this study was to determine concentrations of acute phase proteins (C-reactive protein, haptoglobin, ferritin and paraoxonase-1) in dogs in a coastal town of Ecuador, with natural infection with or without seroreactivity of , , , , and .

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Background: Streptococcus suis can cause meningitis, polyarthritis and acute death in piglets. However, the risk factors associated with S. suis infection remain incompletely understood.

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The effects of filtration (F) and alpha-amylase depletion (AD) were assessed in n = 34 saliva samples. Each saliva sample was split into three aliquots and treated as follows: (1) no treatment; (2) 0.45μm commercial filter; and (3) 0.

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A sample suffers range restriction (RR) when its variance is reduced comparing with its population variance and, in turn, it fails representing such population. If the RR occurs over the latent factor, not directly over the observed variable, the researcher deals with an indirect RR, common when using convenience samples. This work explores how this problem affects different outputs of the factor analysis: multivariate normality (MVN), estimation process, goodness-of-fit, recovery of factor loadings, and reliability.

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Background: Trauma increases risk for venous thromboembolism (VTE) and obesity is a known independent risk factor for VTE development. Currently, no consensus on an optimal prophylactic dosing strategy for morbidly obese trauma patients exists. The objective of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of a BMI-stratified dosing strategy for VTE prophylaxis in morbidly obese trauma patients.

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Factor Xa (FXa) inhibitor use has increased over the last decade and though associated rates of major bleeding are lower compared to warfarin, outcomes from intracranial hemorrhage (ICH) are still significant. Targeted FXa inhibitor reversal agent became available in 2018, however use of 4-factor prothrombin complex concentrate (4F-PCC) for FXa inhibitor-associated ICH continues at many institutions. Evaluate the safety and hemostatic efficacy of 4F-PCC for FXa inhibitor-associated ICH.

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Article Synopsis
  • * A total of 21 biomarkers related to stress, inflammation, the immune system, and other conditions were analyzed, finding significant changes in contaminated samples compared to clean ones, except for a few specific biomarkers.
  • * Techniques like centrifugation, filtration, and chemical clarification showed limited effectiveness in restoring baseline levels of these biomarkers, confirming that contamination can interfere with accurate measurements in porcine oral fluid.
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Introduction: Monitoring the partial pressure of CO (PCO) in newborns who require ventilation would allow avoiding hypocapnia and hypercapnia. The measurement of end-tidal carbon dioxide (ETCO) is an alternative rarely implemented in this population.

Objective: To evaluate the relationship between ETCO and PCO in newborns.

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African swine fever (ASF) is a notifiable viral disease of domestic and wild suids. Despite intensive research efforts, the pathogenesis of the disease is still far from being understood. Analysis of biomarkers in different body fluids may supplement traditional pathogenesis studies.

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  • Saliva from pigs is being recognized as a useful sample for monitoring their health and welfare through various biomarkers.
  • This study focused on how salivary biomarkers related to redox status change in pigs that were intentionally made septic and compared them with healthy and non-septic inflamed pigs.
  • Results showed that certain biomarkers significantly increased in the saliva of septic pigs over time, indicating that these changes could potentially serve as indicators of sepsis in pigs.
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  • A study analyzed 29 salivary analytes in fattening pigs to observe how their levels change throughout different stages of their productive cycle.
  • Saliva samples were collected from 49 Large-White pigs at various phases: suckling, beginning and end of nursery, and beginning and end of growth, revealing that many analytes peaked during lactation and early nursery stages.
  • The research also highlighted sex differences in analyte levels and found weak positive correlations between certain analytes and performance metrics like birth weight and back-fat thickness.
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  • The study aimed to create and test a sensitive method for detecting IgG anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in saliva samples as an alternative to serum testing.
  • A two-step immunoassay was developed, and various factors, including saliva collection methods and protein content correction, were analyzed for their impact on detecting antibody levels after vaccination.
  • Results indicated that while saliva had lower antibody concentrations than serum, it showed similar response patterns, suggesting the method is effective, though saliva may be less sensitive during early immune responses.
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Sepsis is a complex clinical syndrome triggered by an inflammatory host response to an infection. It is usually complicated to detect and diagnose, and has severe consequences in human and veterinary health, especially when treatment is not started early. Therefore, efforts to detect sepsis accurately are needed.

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The use of mannequins to practice different clinical procedures in undergraduate students complies with the 3R principle (Replacement, Reduction, Refinement) without affecting professional competencies. However, commercial solutions are often expensive and therefore, not available for many schools. The main aim of this study was to describe the development and validation of an economical Do-It-Yourself mannequin for jugular blood collection from dogs.

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The use of saliva as a biological sample has many advantages, being especially relevant in pigs where the blood collection is highly stressful and painful, both for the animal and the staff in charge of the sampling. Currently one of the main uses of saliva is for diagnosis and detection of infectious diseases, but the saliva can also be used to measure biomarkers that can provide information of stress, inflammation, immune response and redox homeostasis. This review will be focused on the analytes that can be used for such evaluations.

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A career in journalism can be very stressful, as journalists frequently have to deal with uncontrolled situations such as conducting live interviews. Therefore, training is essential during their career, both for the development of communication skills and for the improvement of the real and effective capacity to perform the tasks of their professional activity. The aim of this study was to assess the levels of stress in students before and after a practical training in a professional television set using subjective (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and Likert scale) and objective (salivary cortisol and alpha-amylase) methods.

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High ferritin serum levels can be found in patients with macrophage activation syndrome, and increased serum ferritin due to cytokine storm have been reported in severe COVID-19 patients. Saliva is being increasingly used in COVID-19 tests as a diagnostic sample for virus detection and quantification. This study aimed to evaluate the possible changes in ferritin in saliva in COVID-19 patients.

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