Publications by authors named "Giuliano Di Pietro"

Food aversions in women undergoing adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer may be linked to oxidative stress and gastrointestinal consequences underlying it, and diet possibly plays a role in this association. This follow-up study included 73 women with breast cancer treated in Florianopolis City, Brazil. Dietary antioxidant capacity-DaC (mmol/d), diet quality-Brazilian Healthy Eating Index Revised (BHEI-R score), and oxidative stress biomarkers were accessed before the treatment, and women were asked if they developed food aversions during adjuvant chemotherapy.

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Background: Telomeres are essential for chromosomal stability and may play a key role in carcinogenesis. Telomere length is suggested as a tentative biomarker of risk for renal cell carcinoma (RCC). However, results of previous association studies between telomere length and risk for RCC are inconsistent.

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Genetic testing for , a DNA repair protein, can identify carriers of pathogenic variants associated with a substantially increased risk for breast and ovarian cancers. However, an association with increased risk is unclear for a large fraction of variants present in the human population. Most of these variants of uncertain clinical significance lead to amino acid changes in the BRCA1 protein.

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Prostate cancer is the most common malignancy among men in the US. Though considerable improvement in the diagnosis of prostate cancer has been achieved in the past decade, predicting disease outcome remains a major clinical challenge. Recent expression profiling studies in prostate cancer suggest microRNAs (miRNAs) may serve as potential biomarkers for prostate cancer risk and disease progression.

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Disparities between African American and Caucasian men in prostate cancer (PCa) diagnosis and treatment in the United States have been well established, with significant racial disparities documented at all stages of PCa management, from differences in the type of treatment offered to progression-free survival or death. These disparities appear to be complex in nature, involving biological determinants as well as socioeconomic and cultural aspects. We present a review of the literature on racial disparities in the diagnosis of PCa, treatment, survival, and genetic susceptibility.

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Objective: To assess the relationship between socioeconomic and anthropometric data, frequency of food consumption, and the development of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) in patients from a small rural town in northeastern Brazil.

Methods: A cross-sectional questionnaire study was performed on patients from the Lagarto City Hospital (n = 50) and from family health units (n = 370).

Results: The 420 patients in the study had one or more NCDs such as hypertension, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and dyslipidemia.

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Aim: To evaluate associations between polymorphisms of the N-acetyltransferase 2 (NAT2), human 8-oxoguanine glycosylase 1 (hOGG1) and X-ray repair cross-complementing protein 1 (XRCC1) genes and risk of upper aerodigestive tract (UADT) cancer.

Patients And Methods: A case-control study involving 117 cases and 224 controls was undertaken. The NAT2 gene polymorphisms were genotyped by automated sequencing and XRCC1 Arg399Gln and hOGG1 Ser326Cys polymorphisms were determined by Polymerase Chain Reaction followed by Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) methods.

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Background: Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) associated with anti-tuberculosis (anti-TB) drug regimens have considerable impact on anti-TB treatment, potentially leading to unsuccessful outcomes. Nevertheless, the risk factors that play a role in anti-TB drug-induced ADRs are not well established. It is well documented that genetic polymorphisms in drug-metabolizing enzymes (DMEs) result in considerably complex variability in anti-TB drug disposition.

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Purpose: To investigate the association of glutathione S-transferase (GST) GSTM1, GSTT1, and GSTP1 genes with the risk of primary open angle glaucoma (POAG) and clinical features of the disease.

Methods: We conducted a case-control study that included 87 Brazilian patients with POAG and 85 healthy controls matched for age, ethnicity, and sex, whose blood samples were genotyped for polymorphisms in GST genes using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based methods.

Results: The GSTM1 null polymorphism was significantly more common in the POAG than in the controls group (OR: 2.

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Based on pre-DNA racial/color methodology, clinical and pharmacological trials have traditionally considered the different geographical regions of Brazil as being very heterogeneous. We wished to ascertain how such diversity of regional color categories correlated with ancestry. Using a panel of 40 validated ancestry-informative insertion-deletion DNA polymorphisms we estimated individually the European, African and Amerindian ancestry components of 934 self-categorized White, Brown or Black Brazilians from the four most populous regions of the Country.

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Background: N-acetyltransferase type 2 (Nat2) is a phase II drug- metabolizing enzyme that plays a key role in the bioactivation of aromatic and heterocyclic amines. Its relevance in drug metabolism and disease susceptibility remains a central theme for pharmacogenetic research, mainly because of its genetic variability among human populations. In fact, the evolutionary and ethnic-specific SNPs on the NAT2 gene remain a focus for the potential discoveries in personalized drug therapy and genetic markers of diseases.

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Importance Of The Field: The Glutathione S-transferases (GSTs) have advanced beyond the classic view of their role in metabolism and are encouraging scientists to assess new approaches to cancer risk characterization and chemotherapy resistance and are opening up exciting possibilities in drug discovery.

Areas Covered In This Review: In this review, the most recent knowledge about the impact of GST genetic polymorphisms in human's cancer susceptibility, ethnic differences in the effects of risk factors and the rise of the GSTs as important targets for drug development are presented. In this context, the ethnic distribution of GST alleles in different populations, which is an important concept that is being incorporated in epidemiologic studies of cancer risk and environmental exposure, was also evaluated.

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Recent pharmacogenomic studies have revealed significant interethnic differences in glutathione S-transferase (GST) allelic frequencies among various ethnic groups. Therefore, we have investigated GSTM1 (gene deletion), GSTT1 (gene deletion) and GSTP1 (rs1695) polymorphism frequencies in 3 Brazilian ethnic groups (n = 203). GSTM1 and GSTT1 polymorphism analyses were performed by multiplex polymerase chain reaction, and GSTP1 (rs1695) analysis was done by polymerase chain reaction restriction fragment length polymorphism.

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The report describes for the first time the enantioselective analysis of fluvastatin in plasma using LC-MS-MS. The enantiomers of fluvastatin (FV) were extracted from plasma with diisopropyl ether at pH 5.0.

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