Publications by authors named "Montesano L"

Ustekinumab (UST) is an interleukin-12/interleukin-23 receptor antagonist approved for the treatment of Crohn's disease (CD). Only limited real-life data on the long-term outcomes of CD patients treated with UST are available. This study assessed UST's long-term effectiveness and safety in a large population-based cohort of moderate to severe CD patients.

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Introduction: Spheroids are spherical aggregates of cells that mimic the three-dimensional (3D) architecture of tissues more closely than traditional two dimensional (2D) cultures. Spheroids of adipose stem cells (SASCs) show special features such as high multilineage differentiation potential and immunomodulatory activity. These properties have been attributed to their secreted factors, such as cytokines and growth factors.

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Melanoma is one of the most sensitive tumors to immune modulation, and the major challenge for melanoma patients' survival is immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapy. γδ T lymphocytes play an antitumoral role in a broad variety of tumors including melanoma and they are optimal candidates for cellular immunotherapy. Thus, a comprehensive analysis of the correlation between γδ T cells and immune checkpoint receptors in the context of melanoma was conducted, with the aim of devising an innovative combined immunotherapeutic strategy.

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Event cameras record sparse illumination changes with high temporal resolution and high dynamic range. Thanks to their sparse recording and low consumption, they are increasingly used in applications such as AR/VR and autonomous driving. Current top-performing methods often ignore specific event-data properties, leading to the development of generic but computationally expensive algorithms, while event-aware methods do not perform as well.

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Introduction: Adipose derived stem cells (ASCs) are a mesenchymal stem cell population of great scientific interest due to their abundance and easiness in obtaining them from adipose tissue. Recently, several techniques for three dimensional (3D) ASCs cultivation have been developed to obtain spheroids of adipose stem cells (SASCs). It was already proved that ASCs are able to differentiate towards the endothelial lineage thus, for the first time, we investigated the ability of our 3D SASCs to differentiate endothelially and the effects of not differentiated SASC secreted factors on specific cultured cells.

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Background: Intestinal ultrasonography (US) allows for the characterization of the intestinal lesions and provides information on transmural inflammation. The aim of the study was to assess the clinical relevance of echopattern and correlation with Crohn's disease (CD) behavior and activity.

Methods: We performed a prospective study including CD patients assessed by intestinal US.

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Understanding the individual qualities sustaining students with and without specific learning disabilities (SLDs) is key to supporting their academic achievement and well-being. In this study, we investigated the differences between students with and without SLDs in terms of intraindividual factors (soft skills and study-related factors), academic and nonacademic outcomes (achievement, academic and life satisfaction), and the relationships between such intraindividual factors and the three outcomes. A total of 318 students (79 males; = 22.

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Objective: In a prospective study, SARS-CoV-2 IgG seroprevalence was assessed during the second pandemic wave (W2) in a cohort of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) patients using biologics. The secondary aim was to compare, in the same cohort, the frequency of seropositivity and of COVID-19 during the second vs. the first (W1) wave.

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The extent to which impaired visual and phonological mechanisms may contribute to the manifestation of developmental dyslexia across orthographies of varying depth has yet to be fully established. By adopting a cross-linguistic approach, the current study aimed to explore the nature of visual and phonological processing in developmental dyslexic readers of shallow (Italian) and deep (English) orthographies, and specifically the characterisation of visual processing deficits in relation to orthographic depth. To achieve this aim, we administered a battery of non-reading visual and phonological tasks.

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Letters and numbers are different domains, and their differentiation increases with schooling. It has nonetheless been argued that reading alphabetic and numerical materials partly involves the same processes, even in adults. Whether individuals with dyslexia have difficulty reading and writing numbers remains to be established.

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Calvarial defects can result from several causes. Tissue engineering hold the potential to restore native form and protective function. We have recently shown that stemness and differentiation ability of spheroids from adipose-derived stem cells (S-ASCs) promotes osteoblasts growth within Integra in a small vertebral lesion.

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Reaching and grasping is an essential part of everybody's life, it allows meaningful interaction with the environment and is key to independent lifestyle. Recent electroencephalogram (EEG)-based studies have already shown that neural correlates of natural reach-and-grasp actions can be identified in the EEG. However, it is still in question whether these results obtained in a laboratory environment can make the transition to mobile applicable EEG systems for home use.

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Hand and face transplants are becoming increasingly common, recording progressively more penile, uterus, abdominal wall, and allotransplantation cases reported worldwide. Despite current protocols allow long-term survival of the allografts, the ultimate goal of donor-specific tolerance has not been achieved yet. In fact, the harmful adverse effects related to the lifelong administration of immunosuppressive agents are the main drawbacks for vascularized composite allotransplantations.

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Angiogenesis is a crucial process for the maintenance of normal tissue physiology and it is involved in tissue remodeling and regeneration. This process is essential for adipose tissue maintenance. The adipose tissue is composed by different cell types including stromal vascular cells as well as adipose stem cells (ASCs).

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Symbolic methods of analysis are valuable tools for investigating complex time-dependent signals. In particular, the ordinal method defines sequences of symbols according to the ordering in which values appear in a time series. This method has been shown to yield useful information, even when applied to signals with large noise contamination.

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Chronic spinal cord injury (SCI) patients present poor motor cortex activation during movement attempts. The reactivation of this brain region can be beneficial for them, for instance, allowing them to use brain-machine interfaces for motor rehabilitation or restoration. These brain-machine interfacess generally use electroencephalography (EEG) to measure the cortical activation during the attempts of movement, quantifying it as the event-related desynchronization (ERD) of the alpha/mu rhythm.

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Two-dimensional (2D) cell cultures have been extensively used to investigate stem cell biology, but new insights show that the 2D model may not properly represent the potential of the tissue of origin. Conversely, three-dimensional cultures exhibit protein expression patterns and intercellular junctions that are more representative of their in vivo condition. Multiclonal cells that grow in suspension are defined as "spheroids," and we have previously demonstrated that spheroids from adipose-derived stem cells (S-ASCs) displayed enhanced regenerative capability.

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Objective: In this manuscript, we consider factors that may affect the design of a hybrid brain-computer interface (BCI). We combine neural correlates of natural movements and interaction error-related potentials (ErrP) to perform a 3D reaching task, focusing on the impact that such factors have on the evoked ErrP signatures and in their classification.

Approach: Users attempted to control a 3D virtual interface that simulated their own hand, to reach and grasp two different objects.

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Motor rehabilitation based on the association of electroencephalographic (EEG) activity and proprioceptive feedback has been demonstrated as a feasible therapy for patients with paralysis. To promote long-lasting motor recovery, these interventions have to be carried out across several weeks or even months. The success of these therapies partly relies on the performance of the system decoding movement intentions, which normally has to be recalibrated to deal with the nonstationarities of the cortical activity.

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Background: Gait training for individuals with neurological disorders is challenging in providing the suitable assistance and more adaptive behaviour towards user needs. The user specific adaptation can be defined based on the user interaction with the orthosis and by monitoring the user intentions. In this paper, an adaptive control model, commanded by the user intention, is evaluated using a lower limb exoskeleton with incomplete spinal cord injury individuals (SCI).

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Brain-Computer Interfaces may present an intuitive way for motor impaired end users to operate assistive devices of daily life. Recent studies showed that complex kinematics like grasping can be successfully decoded from low frequency electroencephalogram. In this work we present a hierarchical method to asynchronously discriminate two different grasps often used in daily life actions (palmar, pincer) from a combined set of motor execution and motor intention.

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Ultrasound treatment of liquid aluminum alloys is known to improve mechanical properties of castings. Aluminum foundry alloys are frequently used for production of parts that undergo severe cavitation erosion phenomena during service. In this paper, the effect of the ultrasound treatment on cavitation erosion resistance of AlSi7 alloy was assessed and compared to that of conventionally cast samples.

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Objective: One use of EEG-based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) in rehabilitation is the detection of movement intention. In this paper we investigate for the first time the instantaneous phase of movement related cortical potential (MRCP) and its application to the detection of gait intention.

Approach: We demonstrate the utility of MRCP phase in two independent datasets, in which 10 healthy subjects and 9 chronic stroke patients executed a self-initiated gait task in three sessions.

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