Publications by authors named "Lombardo M"

Diabetic retinopathy and retinal vein occlusion represent two prevalent vision-threatening retinal diseases. Retinal laser therapy still plays an important role in treating these conditions, but its successful administration often requires referral to specialized centers and retina experts. It is, therefore, essential to develop a new treatment methodology that enables patients to benefit from the expertise of specialists from reference centers.

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The European Commission requested the EFSA Panel on Plant Health to prepare and deliver risk assessments for commodities listed in Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2018/2019 as 'high-risk plants, plant products and other objects'. Taking into account the available scientific information, including the technical information provided by the applicant country, this Scientific Opinion covers the plant health risks posed by the following commodities: , and graftwood, bare-root plants and rooted plants in pots up to 7 years old imported into the EU from the UK. A list of pests potentially associated with the commodities was compiled.

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Background: Notwithstanding guidance from the European Cystic Fibrosis (CF) Society (ECFS) neonatal screening (NBS) working group, significant variation persists in the evaluation and management of Cystic Fibrosis Screen Positive, Inconclusive Diagnosis (CFSPID) subjects, leaving many aspects of care under debate. This study reports the results of a national survey investigating management and treatment approaches of pre-school CFSPIDs in Italy.

Methods: In February 2024, a comprehensive questionnaire was distributed to all Italian CF centers.

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Even if rarely detected, right atrial (RA) masses represent a diagnostic challenge due to their heterogeneous presentation. Para-physiological RA structures, such as a prominent Eustachian valve, Chiari's network, and lipomatous atrial hypertrophy, may easily be misinterpreted as pathological RA masses, including thrombi, myxomas, and vegetations. Each pathological mass should always be correlated with adequate clinical, anamnestic, and laboratory data.

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Microalgae are photosynthetic microorganisms that have a rapid growth cycle and carbon fixation ability. They have diverse cellular structures, ranging from prokaryotic cyanobacteria to more complex eukaryotic forms, which enable them to thrive in a variety of environments and support biomass production. They utilize both photosynthesis and heterotrophic pathways, indicating their ecological importance and potential for biotechnological applications.

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Malnutrition, a significant risk factor for mortality and morbidity in the elderly, poses a huge threat in the geriatric population, showing a high prevalence, especially in people affected by chronic non-communicable age-related diseases [...

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Bovine colostrum (BC), the first milk secreted by mammals after birth, is a trending alternative source for supplementing infants and children, offering benefits for gut and immune health. Its rich components, such as proteins, immunoglobulins, lactoferrin, and glycans, are used to fortify diets and support development. Preterm development is crucial, especially in the maturation of essential systems, and from 2010 to 2020, approximately 15% of all premature births occurred at less than 32 weeks of gestation worldwide.

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Background: Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is the most common complication in pregnancy, representing a serious risk for the mother and fetus. Identifying new biomarkers to ameliorate the screening and improving GDM diagnosis and treatment is crucial. During the last decade, a few studies have used speckle tracking echocardiography (STE) for assessing the myocardial deformation properties of fetuses (FGDM) and infants (IGDM) of GDM women, providing not univocal results.

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Chrono-nutritional factors may play a significant role in glucose regulation and the risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D). We investigated the association between breakfast skipping (BS) and fasting plasma glucose (FPG) levels in a non-diabetic cohort of the ABCD project (nutrition, cardiovascular wellness and diabetes) representing the general population of Palermo, Italy Among the 623 participants included in the analysis, 118 individuals were identified as BS. In men, BS was associated with higher values of FPG ( < .

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Clinical, neuroimaging and genomics evidence have increasingly underscored a degree of overlap between autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This study explores the specific contribution of their core symptoms to shared biology in a sample of N=166 verbal children (6-12 years) with rigorously-established primary diagnoses of either autism or ADHD (without autism). We investigated the associations between inter-individual differences in clinician-based dimensional measures of autism and ADHD symptoms and whole-brain low motion intrinsic functional connectivity (iFC).

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates how gender affects dietary habits and physical activity, aiming to create targeted health interventions.
  • Using principal component analysis (PCA) on data from 2,509 adults, researchers identified five distinct eating and activity groups and found notable differences in food preferences and exercise types between men and women.
  • The findings suggest that men typically consume more meat and engage in strength training, while women prefer structured, vegetable-rich diets, highlighting the importance of personalized health strategies for both genders.
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Objectives: Influenza-like illness (ILI) refers to the set of symptoms associated with seasonal influenza infection. In Italy, the syndromic surveillance system RespiVirNet uses both epidemiological and virological data to monitor ILI incidence with a weekly cadence. To estimate ILI incidence in real time, several countries adopted surveillance systems which include data from the emergency-urgency (E-U) system.

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  • Obesity is a significant health issue associated with chronic disease risks; this study looked at gender differences in eating behaviors and body composition among obese individuals in Italy.
  • The research involved analyzing data from 720 adults, revealing that males had higher overall weight and fat mass, while females had higher fat mass percentages and distinct meal frequency patterns.
  • The study found that structured eaters had healthier body compositions, whereas impulsive eaters were linked to higher fat mass, highlighting the need for gender-specific strategies in obesity management, despite limitations in the study's design.
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This study investigated the effect of a theranostic-guided UV-A light corneal photo-reshaping technique on corneal elevation and wavefront aberration (WA) in human donor eyes. A specialized platform, combining UV-A light with corneal iontophoresis for controlled, patterned, riboflavin delivery, was used for both distribution assessment and concentration-driven photopolymerization of corneal proteins. In all cases, a consistent riboflavin concentration gradient, with lower levels in the central prepupillary zone, was recorded.

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Vacuoleless Gametophytes (VLG) is a DC1 domain protein that was initially characterized as essential for early female and male gametophytes development in Arabidopsis. However, VLG expression was also detected in stamens, pistils and other sporophytic tissues, implying a broader role for this protein. As homozygous insertional VLG lines resulted unviable, we generated Arabidopsis amiRNA VLG knock-down plants to study the role of VLG in sporophyte development.

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The current outbreak of HPAI H5N1 virus infections in dairy cattle in the USA underscores the need for easily accessible methods to rapidly assess host susceptibility for infection with known and emerging influenza viruses. Here we show that lung slice cultures from calves provide a useful method to rapidly screen host susceptibility to a range of influenza A viruses.

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Hundreds of millions of single cells have been analyzed using high-throughput transcriptomic methods. The cumulative knowledge within these datasets provides an exciting opportunity for unlocking insights into health and disease at the level of single cells. Meta-analyses that span diverse datasets building on recent advances in large language models and other machine-learning approaches pose exciting new directions to model and extract insight from single-cell data.

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Article Synopsis
  • * A total of eight studies involving 303 PE patients and 498 healthy controls showed that MVP prevalence was significantly higher in PE individuals (40.6%) than in controls (12.8%), with an odds ratio of 5.80 indicating a strong association.
  • * Subgroup analysis revealed that MVP prevalence was about three times higher in PE children and adolescents compared to PE adults, and the overall results showed high consistency with no significant publication bias.
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Aims/hypothesis: Wolfram syndrome 1 (WS1) is an inherited condition mainly manifesting in childhood-onset diabetes mellitus and progressive optic nerve atrophy. The causative gene, WFS1, encodes wolframin, a master regulator of several cellular responses, and the gene's mutations associate with clinical variability. Indeed, nonsense/frameshift variants correlate with more severe symptoms than missense/in-frame variants.

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  • A systematic review examined left atrial mechanics in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) about to undergo electrical cardioversion (ECV), focusing on the effect of AF on left atrial reservoir strain (LASr).
  • The analysis included 12 studies with a total of 880 patients, revealing a high ECV success rate of 91.5%, but highlighted that 35.2% of patients experienced AF recurrence within a median follow-up of 5.4 months.
  • Key findings indicated that a lower LASr before ECV was linked to higher chances of cardioversion failure and AF recurrence, suggesting that measuring LASr could help predict AF relapse and assess thromboembolic risk in these patients. *
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Background: During the last two decades, a few studies have evaluated the common carotid artery (CCA) intima-media thickness (IMT) in women with previous history of pre-eclampsia (pPE) in comparison to women with uncomplicated pregnancies, providing not univocal results. This systematic review and meta-analysis has been designed to summarize the main findings of these studies and to examine the overall influence of pPE on CCA-IMT.

Methods: All studies assessing CCA-IMT in pPE women in comparison to women who had uncomplicated pregnancies, selected from PubMed and EMBASE databases, were included.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The systematic review analyzed 21 echocardiographic studies to estimate the prevalence of mitral valve prolapse (MVP), finding an overall MVP prevalence of 4.9% across various populations.
  • - Older studies (1976-1998) showed a higher MVP prevalence (7.8%), while more recent studies (1999-2021) reported a lower prevalence (2.2%), likely due to differences in diagnostic criteria and potential biases.
  • - MVP is generally associated with a low risk of significant complications, although it can be linked to mild mitral regurgitation and minor heart abnormalities, and it occurs less frequently in the general community.
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Objectives: The main objective of this study was to report and investigate the characteristics and longitudinal changes in dark-without-pressure (DWP) fundus lesions in patients with autoimmune diseases using multimodal imaging techniques.

Methods: In this retrospective observational case series, five patients affected by ocular and systemic autoimmune disorders and DWP were examined. DWP was assessed by multimodal imaging, including color fundus photography (CFP), near-infrared reflectance (NIR), blue reflectance (BR), blue autofluorescence (BAF), optical coherence tomography (OCT), OCT-angiography (OCT-A), fluorescein angiography (FA) and indocyanine green angiography (ICGA), and functional testing, including standard automated perimetry (SAP) and electroretinography (ERG).

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