Publications by authors named "Giovanni Arpa"

Long interspersed nuclear elements 1 (LINE-1) are the most abundant and the only autonomous mobile elements in the human genome. When their epigenetic repression is removed, it can lead to disease, such as autoimmune diseases and cancer. Coeliac disease (CeD) is an immune-mediated disease triggered by an abnormal T-cell response to dietary gluten and a predisposing condition of small bowel adenocarcinoma (SBA), frequently characterized by epigenetic alterations.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • * The study included 177 patients, showing that elevated FC levels were linked to poorer clinical responses and worse long-term outcomes, including complications and mortality.
  • * Results indicated that high FC levels are more common in complicated cases of CD and NCEs, suggesting that FC could be a useful marker for assessing disease severity and predicting future health issues.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Homosalate is a common UV-B filter in sunscreens that has been found to have estrogenic and anti-androgenic effects in animal models, but its impact on thyroid cells is not well understood.
  • This study tested the effects of Homosalate on two types of thyroid cells (FRTL-5 and NHT) over different concentrations and time periods, finding it significantly reduced cell viability in FRTL-5 at 250μM after 72 hours and in NHT only at the highest concentration (2000μM) after 48-72 hours.
  • The results showed that high concentrations of Homosalate can cause cytotoxicity, exhibit genotoxic effects in rat thyroid cells, and increase the expression of
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The oncogene , also known as or , is located on chromosome 17 (q12). It encodes a tyrosine kinase receptor, the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2), involved in neoplastic proliferation, tumor angiogenesis, and invasiveness. Over the past years, the introduction of various anti-HER2 therapies has significantly improved outcomes for patients with HER2-positive breast and gastroesophageal carcinomas.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Aim: Gastrointestinal medullary carcinoma is a rare histologic subtype of adenocarcinoma. As nonampullary small bowel medullary carcinomas (SB-MCs) are poorly characterized, we aimed to analyse their clinicopathologic and immunohistochemical features and to compare them with nonmedullary small bowel adenocarcinomas (NM-SBAs).

Methods And Results: Surgically resected SBAs collected through the Small Bowel Cancer Italian Consortium were classified as SB-MCs (carcinomas with ≥50% of tumour fulfilling the typical histologic criteria of MC) or NM-SBAs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • A 62-year-old man with celiac disease went to the hospital because he had stomach pain, tiredness, and bleeding in his stool.
  • Doctors checked his insides with cameras and found a bad growth in his small intestine.
  • After surgery to remove the bad part, they discovered he had cancer but used special testing that showed some gene changes, which might help find better treatments in the future.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Ultra-short coeliac disease (USCD) is defined as villous atrophy only present in the duodenal bulb (D1) with concurrent positive coeliac serology. We present the first, multicentre, international study of patients with USCD.

Methods: Patients with USCD were identified from 10 tertiary hospitals (6 from Europe, 2 from Asia, 1 from North America and 1 from Australasia) and compared with age-matched and sex-matched patients with conventional coeliac disease.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Although enteropathy due to angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs) has been known for over 10 years, clinicians' awareness of this condition is still low.

Aims: To systematically review the literature about clinical phenotypes, distribution of mucosal changes throughout the gastrointestinal tract and prognosis of enteropathy due to ARBs.

Methods: According to PRISMA guidelines, we searched PubMed and Embase for relevant articles up to November 6, 2023.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - Patients with Crohn's disease (CrD) have a higher risk of developing small bowel adenocarcinomas (SBAs), and a study found that IDH1 mutations, specifically the R132C variant, are present in about 20% of these cancers, more frequently than in sporadic SBAs.
  • - The study compared various features between IDH1-mutated and wild-type CrD-SBAs, revealing that the mutated cases had lower cytokeratin 7 expression, higher p53 overexpression, and increased MGMT methylation, indicating unique clinical characteristics.
  • - Despite the differences in tumor features, there was no significant difference in cancer-specific survival rates between patients with IDH1 mutations and those without
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Few data are available on flow cytometry (FC) for monitoring intraepithelial lymphocytes (IELs) in refractory celiac disease (RCD), non-responsive celiac disease (NRCD), and non-celiac enteropathies (NCEs).

Aims: 1) To investigate the significance of monitoring IELs immunophenotype with FC in patients with NRCD, RCD and NCEs; 2) to evaluate FC concordance with immunohistochemistry (IHC) and γ-TCR clonality analysis.

Methods: Patients investigated between January-2012 and February-2023 were divided into two groups: 1)confirmed RCD or NRCD being investigated for persistent symptoms and suspected complications of celiac disease (CD); 2)NCEs lacking clinical/histological response.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Early-onset small bowel adenocarcinoma (EO-SBA) is a rare and poorly characterized entity.

Methods: This retrospective study conducted on an international multicenter cohort of 208 patients with SBA aimed at comparing clinicopathologic features of EO-SBA (age younger than 50 years at SBA diagnosis) and late-onset SBA (age 50 years or older at SBA diagnosis).

Results: The presence of predisposing pathologic conditions was significantly more common in the EO-SBA group compared with that in the late-onset SBA group ( P = 0.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Small bowel adenocarcinoma (SBA) is a rare cancer with an aggressive behavior. No study has specifically addressed the putative prognostic role of mismatch repair status in stage III SBAs.

Aims: We aimed to investigate whether mismatch repair deficiency is associated with cancer-specific survival in a Western cohort of patients with stage III SBAs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Non-ampullary small bowel adenocarcinoma is a rare neoplasm with an ominous prognosis, whose incidence is higher in some chronic immuno-inflammatory conditions, such as coeliac and Crohn's disease. Recently, claudin 18.2, a transmembrane protein normally expressed in gastric mucosa, has been recognized as a novel pan-cancer therapeutic target, and several clinical trials with claudin-18-directed drugs have shown promising results on various gastrointestinal malignancies.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: The immune mechanisms underlying human autoimmune atrophic gastritis (AAG) are poorly understood. We sought to assess immune mucosal alterations in patients with AAG.

Methods: In 2017-2021, we collected gastric corpus biopsies from 24 patients with AAG (median age 62 years, interquartile range 56-67, 14 women), 26 age-matched and sex-matched healthy controls (HCs), and 14 patients with Helicobacter pylori infection (HP).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Autoimmune gastritis is a chronic immune-mediated disorder characterized by varied clinical manifestations and that should be endoscopically managed over time, as the gastric atrophy contributes to microenvironmental alterations of the stomach milieu, and an increased cancer risk has been linked to this condition. Here, we report the unusual case of a woman who developed a cardiac high-grade pyloric adenoma in a context of previously undiagnosed autoimmune gastritis with synchronous neuroendocrine cell hyperplastic and dysplastic lesions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • A study investigated the presence of intraepithelial lymphocyte (IEL) infiltration in patients with potential autoimmune gastritis (AIG) who had positive anti-parietal cell antibodies but no gastric atrophy.
  • Nine patients who developed overt AIG were analyzed for deep and superficial CD3+ IEL counts, revealing significantly higher deep IEL counts compared to healthy controls and those with active H. pylori gastritis.
  • Results suggest that increased deep CD3+ IEL infiltration could serve as a marker for potential AIG, indicating the need for further studies with more patients to confirm these findings.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In this paper, we will continue the description of histological findings of infantile and paediatric small bowel alterations with the main clinical pictures and differential diagnosis. We emphasise once again the need to evaluate the biopsies in an adequate clinical contest and with a systematic approach, including epithelial alterations, lamina propria changes, mucosal architecture, and the distribution of inflammation, together with other morphological signs more specific of certain diseases. We describe the histological findings of coeliac and Crohn's disease, gastrointestinal food allergic diseases, Langerhans cell histiocytosis, nutritional deficiencies and infections.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The neonatal and paediatric spectrum of small bowel disorders encompass a wide variety of conditions, ranging from food allergies to life-threatening surgical emergencies or life-long medical conditions and, as such, it comes with a whole set of diagnostic challenges for the non-paediatric pathologist. Histologic examination is a cornerstone of diagnosis in a large number of diseases and may still provide important diagnostic clues in the appropriate clinical context. In this review, divided in two sections, we aim to provide a comprehensive histopathological summary of paediatric small bowel alteration and their differential diagnoses with a reference to the main clinical aspects required for appropriate interpretation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Very early onset inflammatory bowel disease (VEO-IBD) represents approximately 25% of cases of IBD-like colitis occurring during childhood and, by definition, it is characterized by an onset prior to 6 years of age. This subgroup of patients presents significant differences from IBD occurring in older children and in adults, including a more severe clinical course, a reduced responsiveness to conventional IBD therapy, and a greater proportion of cases featuring an underlying monogenic disorder. Histological findings from gastro-intestinal (GI) biopsies are characterized by an IBD-like, apoptotic or enterocolitis-like pattern, complicating the differential diagnosis with other pediatric diseases involving GI tract.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Poorly cohesive carcinomas (PCCs) are neoplasms characterized by a dyshesive cell invasion pattern featuring single-cell or cord-like stromal infiltration. Although they have been extensively studied in the stomach and other digestive system organs, limited data regarding nonampullary small bowel poorly cohesive carcinomas (SB-PCCs) are hitherto available. The aims of our study were to analyze the clinicopathologic and immunophenotypical features of SB-PCCs (PCC pattern accounting for >50% of the neoplasm) and to compare them with small bowel adenocarcinomas (SBAs), not otherwise specified (SBAs-NOS) and with cancers with a histologically distinct PCC component accounting for 10% to 50% of the neoplasm (mixed-poorly-cohesive-glandular-SBAs).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Most Crohn's disease-associated small bowel carcinomas (CrD-SBCs) are diagnosed in advanced stage and have poor prognosis. To improve diagnosis and therapy, a better knowledge of tumour precancerous lesions, histotypes and prognostic factors is needed. We investigated histologically and immunohistochemically 52 CrD-SBCs and 51 small bowel carcinomas unrelated to inflammatory disease, together with their tumour-associated mucosa, looking for Crohn-selective changes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The wider use of gastrointestinal endoscopic procedures has led to an increased detection of small intestinal preneoplastic and neoplastic epithelial lesions, most of which are identified in the duodenum and ampullary region. Like their malignant counterparts, small intestinal glandular precursor lesions, which include adenomas and hamartomas, may arise sporadically or be associated with hereditary tumor syndromes, such as familial adenomatous polyposis, -associated polyposis, Lynch syndrome, Peutz-Jeghers syndrome, juvenile polyposis syndrome, and Cowden syndrome. In addition, dysplastic, preinvasive lesions have been observed adjacent to small bowel adenocarcinomas complicating immune-related disorders, such as celiac or Crohn's disease.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Duodenal polyps and superficial mucosal lesions (DP/SMLs) are poorly characterised.

Aims: To describe a series of endoscopically-diagnosed extra-ampullary DPs/SMLs.

Methods: This is a retrospective study conducted in a tertiary referral Endoscopy Unit, including patients who had DPs or SMLs that were biopsied or removed in 2010-2019.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Special AT-rich sequence-binding protein 2 (SATB2) is a transcription factor expressed by colonic cryptic epithelium and epithelial neoplasms of the lower gastrointestinal (GI) tract, as well as by small bowel adenocarcinomas (SBAs), though at a lower rate. Nevertheless, up to now, only small SBA series, often including a very limited number of Crohn's disease-associated SBAs (CrD-SBAs) and celiac disease-associated SBAs (CD-SBA), have been investigated for SATB2 expression. We evaluated the expression of SATB2 and other GI phenotypic markers (cytokeratin (CK) 7 and CK20, caudal type homeobox 2 (CDX2) and alpha-methylacyl-CoA racemase (AMACR)), as well as mismatch repair (MMR) proteins, in 100 SBAs, encompassing 34 CrD-SBAs, 28 CD-SBAs and 38 sporadic cases (Spo-SBAs).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Celiac disease is when your body has a bad reaction to gluten (a protein found in wheat, barley, and rye), which can hurt your intestines and make it hard to absorb nutrients.
  • People who have it may have certain genes that make them more likely to develop this illness.
  • Doctors use special tests, like looking at a small piece of the intestines under a microscope, to diagnose celiac disease and to figure out how bad it is.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF