Publications by authors named "Luca A"

Purpose Of Review: Hot phases are a challenging clinical presentation in arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy (ACM), marked by acute chest pain and elevated cardiac troponins in the absence of obstructive coronary disease. These episodes manifest as myocarditis and primarily affect young patients, contributing to a heightened risk of life-threatening arrhythmias and potential disease progression. This review aims to synthesize recent research on the pathophysiology, diagnostic challenges, and therapeutic management of hot phases in ACM.

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Neonatal seizures require urgent treatment, but often go undetected without expert EEG monitoring. We have developed and validated a seizure detection model using retrospective EEG data from 332 neonates. A convolutional neural network was trained and tested on over 50,000 hours (n = 202) of annotated single-channel EEG containing 12,402 seizure events.

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Transfusion of blood products following cardiothoracic surgery represents a significant proportion of national blood product usage, has significant cost implications and is associated with increased 30-day mortality. Following identification of an increase in blood product use, we implemented a healthcare improvement initiative using a perioperative care model and establishment of a new multispecialty cardiothoracic surgery taskforce to further define and tackle the problem. The initiative incorporated a bundle of preoperative identification of high-risk patients, an intraoperative haemostasis checklist, a programme of unit education focussing on bleeding postbypass and use of thromboelastography and introduction of postoperative protocols for identification and escalation of bleeding.

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Background: Exposure to asbestos in the workplace is currently recognized as one of the leading causes of work-related deaths, with more than half of deaths attributable to cancer.

Aims: The aim of this systematic literature review was to investigate the mental health and psychological distress of patients affected by asbestos-related diseases and their caregivers.

Methods: The review was conducted using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses.

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A physically active lifestyle offers multiple benefits, including lowering the risk of cardiovascular disease, lowering body-mass index (BMI), and, last but not least, improving the quality of life. However, there are still disincentives to physical activity in children with heart diseases due to the high protection of parents and the scarcity of data in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to help pediatricians and pediatric cardiologists identify the type of physical activity allowed in children with congenital cardiac malformations, thus minimizing the risk of major adverse effects, such as acute coronary syndrome and sudden cardiac death.

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High-energy nuclear collisions create a quark-gluon plasma, whose initial condition and subsequent expansion vary from event to event, impacting the distribution of the eventwise average transverse momentum [P([p_{T}])]. Disentangling the contributions from fluctuations in the nuclear overlap size (geometrical component) and other sources at a fixed size (intrinsic component) remains a challenge. This problem is addressed by measuring the mean, variance, and skewness of P([p_{T}]) in ^{208}Pb+^{208}Pb and ^{129}Xe+^{129}Xe collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=5.

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One of the leading challenges in Water Resource Recovery Facility monitoring and control is the poor data quality and sensor consistency due to the tough and complex circumstances of the process operation. This paper presents a new principal component analysis fault detection approach for the nitrate and nitrite concentration sensor based on Water Resource Recovery Facility measurements, together with the Fisher Discriminant Analysis identification of fault types. Five malfunction cases were considered: constant additive error, ramp changing error in time, incorrect amplification error, random additive error, and unchanging sensor value error.

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Article Synopsis
  • Current antipsychotics mainly target dopamine but often fail to address the complexity of schizophrenia and can cause significant side effects, highlighting a need for new treatments.
  • Recent research is focusing on non-dopaminergic antipsychotics, such as muscarinic agonists and 5-HT2A antagonists, to offer better therapeutic options for schizophrenia.
  • While new drugs like xanomeline-trospium have been approved, others like bitopertin and pimavanserin were halted in development, emphasizing the need for cautious evaluation of their efficacy and safety.
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Magnesium and its alloys represent promising candidates for biomedical implants due to their biodegradability and mechanical properties, which are similar to natural bone. However, their rapid degradation process characterized by dynamic pH fluctuations and significant hydrogen gas evolution during biocorrosion adversely affects both in vitro and in vivo assessments. While the ISO 10993-5 and 12 standards provide guidelines for evaluating the in vitro biocompatibility of biodegradable materials, they also introduce testing variability conditions that yield inconsistent results.

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  • The study investigates two phenotypes of Parkinson's Disease (PD) based on the timing of REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD) onset in relation to motor symptoms: "body first" (RBD before motor symptoms) and "brain first" (RBD after motor symptoms).
  • Researchers analyzed striatal dopaminergic function in PD patients using imaging and found that the "body first" group exhibited more symmetrical motor impairment, higher cognitive decline, and distinctive imaging results compared to those with later onset RBD.
  • The findings corroborate the SOC model's predictions, indicating different patterns of neurological function and cognitive impairment linked to the onset of RBD in PD.
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White matter (WM) free water (FW) is a potential imaging marker for cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD). This study aimed to characterize longitudinal changes in WM FW and investigate factors contributing to its elevation in CSVD. We included 80 CSVD patients and 40 normal controls (NCs) with multi-modality MRI data.

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Objective: Previous retrospective studies have reported vigabatrin-associated brain abnormalities on magnetic resonance imaging (VABAM), although clinical impact is unknown. We evaluated the association between vigabatrin and predefined brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) changes in a large homogenous tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) cohort and assessed to what extent VABAM-related symptoms were reported in TSC infants.

Methods: The Dutch TSC Registry and the EPISTOP cohort provided retrospective and prospective data from 80 TSC patients treated with vigabatrin (VGB) before the age of 2 years and 23 TSC patients without VGB.

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Oncotherapy can shape intestinal microbiota, which, in turn, may influence therapy effectiveness. Furthermore, microbiome signatures during treatments can be leveraged for the development of personalised therapeutic protocols in cancer treatment based on the identification of microbiota profiles as prognostic tools. Here, for the first time, the trajectory of gut and salivary microbiota in a patient treated with Larotrectinib, a targeted therapy approved for diagnosed glioblastoma multiforme neurotrophic tyrosine receptor kinase () gene fusion-positive, has been accurately investigated.

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Nanoporous metals are a class of nanostructured materials finding extensive applications in multiple fields thanks to their unique properties attributed to their high surface area and interconnected nanoscale ligaments. They can be prepared following different strategies, but the deposition of an arbitrary pure porous metal is still challenging. Recently, a dry synthesis of nanoporous films based on the plasma treatment of metal thin layers deposited by physical vapour deposition has been demonstrated, as a general route to form pure nanoporous films from a large set of metals.

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  • The Itel-MMSE is an easy-to-use telephone screening tool for dementia that gained traction during COVID-19 but needed validation and faced issues like a ceiling effect.
  • This study standardized and validated the Itel-MMSE, recruiting 707 healthy participants and 368 individuals with Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer's Disease to establish new cut-off scores.
  • Results indicated that the Itel-MMSE is effective in identifying dementia, with strong performance metrics in distinguishing between normal conditions and cognitive impairments, supporting its use in remote screenings.
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Background: Resolvins, which are divided into series D (RvD) and E (RvE), originate from omega-3 fatty acids, DHA and EPA and were recently found to be involved in the modulation of inflammation in some tumors, including breast cancer (BC). We aimed to assess the resolvin profiles (RvD1, RvD2, RvD3 and RvE1) in the plasma of BC patients compared with those of controls and to determine differences in their concentrations according to BC presentation and immunohistochemical characteristics.

Methods: We considered BC patients (sporadic, familiar and BRCA1/2-mutated forms) naïve to any anticancer treatment and controls affected by nonmalignant breast disease.

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MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs (18-22 nucleotides) that regulate gene expression and are associated with various diseases, including Laryngeal Cancer (LCa), which has a high mortality rate due to late diagnosis. Traditional methods for miRNA detection present several drawbacks (time-consuming steps, high cost and high false positive rate). Early-stage diagnosis and selective detection of miRNAs remain challenging.

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Objectives: This single-center retrospective study evaluated the long-term (~5 years) prognostic value of dipyridamole stress cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) in patients with known or suspected coronary artery disease (CAD), assessing the impact of both key phases of the ischemic cascade (perfusion and wall motion).

Material And Methods: We considered 322 consecutive patients who underwent dipyridamole stress CMR. Abnormal wall motion at rest and after dipyridamole, perfusion at stress and at rest, and late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) were analyzed.

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Pulmonary hypertension is a complex condition that has distinct characteristics in pediatric populations. This review explores the important role of early childhood nutrition in the growth, progression, and management of pediatric pulmonary hypertension. Nutritional deficiencies, including those of vitamins C, D, and iron, are closely linked to worse outcomes in children with this disease, emphasizing the importance of early intervention to prevent malnutrition and promote growth.

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Article Synopsis
  • * The review focuses on the roles of miRNAs in various soft tissue sarcoma subtypes and how altered miRNA activity can act as oncogenes or tumor suppressors, affecting cancer progression.
  • * It highlights the potential of specific miRNAs for diagnostics and treatment targets, underscoring their promise in improving personalized therapies for sarcoma patients.
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Due to their indisputable biocompatibility and abundant source, biopolymers are widely used to prepare hydrogels for skin tissue engineering. Among them, cellulose is a great option for this challenging application due to its increased water retention capacity, mechanical strength, versatility and unlimited availability. Since algae are an unexploited source of cellulose, the novelty of this study is the decellularization of two different species, freshly collected from the Black Sea coast, using two different chemical surfactants (sodium dodecyl sulphate and Triton X-100), and characterisation of the resulted complex biopolymeric 3D matrices.

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  • The study focuses on metastasis-initiating cells in colorectal cancer (CRC) and explores the relationship between TGF-β signaling and L1CAM, aiming to combat cancer progression and resistance.
  • Researchers developed a hybrid nanosystem using gold nanoparticles covered with porous biosilica and modified with L1CAM antibodies, which targets tumor-initiating cells and delivers a TGF-β inhibitor to reduce metastasis.
  • Results showed that the nanosystem effectively decreases tumor growth in CRC models, demonstrating its potential for targeted therapy and imaging, paving the way for personalized treatment strategies.
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Background: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a growing global health challenge with a multifactorial etiology encompassing genetic susceptibility, nutrition, and inflammation in the bowel.

Objective: To examine micronutrient status in CRC patients undergoing CRC resection.

Design: We performed a case-control study including 13 consecutive CRC patients and 10 healthy controls (CTRL) comparing the serum levels of 29 micronutrients, namely Copper, Zinc, Selenium, Chromium, Manganese, Carnitine, Choline, Inositol, Methylmalonic acid (MMA), Vitamin (Vit) B1, Vit B2, Vit B3, Vit B5, Vit B6, Vit C, Vit A, Vit D3, Vit E, Vit K1, Vit K2 and the amino acids Serine, Valine, Leucine, Isoleucine, Asparagine, Glutamine, Arginine, Citrulline and Cysteine.

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Article Synopsis
  • * Key genes related to copper metabolism, such as APP and SOD1, are found to be altered in CRC, with increased levels of APP protein in cancer tissues and changes in copper distribution between serum and tissues.
  • * The study highlights a significant relationship between copper imbalance and CRC progression, suggesting that targeting copper-related proteins could be beneficial for understanding and potentially treating this cancer.
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Biodegradable alternatives to classic solid-state components are rapidly taking place in front-end photonic systems like metamaterials, meta-surfaces and photonic crystals. From this point of view, numerous solutions have been proposed involving eco-friendly compounds. Among them, the Luria Bertani agar (LBA) growth medium has been recently proposed as a functional option with the remarkable advantage of allowing the growth of fluorescent protein expressing bacteria.

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