Publications by authors named "Opazo M"

Background: Thyroglobulin (Tg) is a biomarker of iodine status. Newborn Tg is a more sensitive marker than neonatal TSH in detecting variations in iodine intake. This study aims to validate an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for Tg determination on dried blood spots (DBS) in newborns.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates the prevalence of diabesity (obesity and type 2 diabetes) and prediabesity in Chilean adults, using data from the 2016-2017 National Health Survey with nearly 5,000 participants.
  • Findings reveal that 5.7% of participants had diabesity, 3.6% had prediabesity, and 2.5% were categorized as normo-diabetic, with higher rates among women, those with lower education levels, and individuals aged 45-46.
  • The overall prevalence of prediabesity and diabesity stands at 9.3%, indicating an urgent need for preventive measures and strategies to address these health issues in the population.
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Thyroxine (T4) is a drug extensively utilized for the treatment of hypothyroidism. However, the oral absorption of T4 presents certain limitations. This research investigates the efficacy of CO nanobubbles in water as a potential oral carrier for T4 administration to C57BL/6 hypothyroid mice.

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Background: The prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has significantly risen in the past three decades, prompting researchers to explore the potential contributions of environmental factors during pregnancy to ASD development. One such factor of interest is gestational hypothyroxinemia (HTX), a frequent condition in pregnancy associated with cognitive impairments in the offspring. While retrospective human studies have linked gestational HTX to autistic traits, the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the development of ASD-like phenotypes remain poorly understood.

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Introduction: Gestational hypothyroxinemia (HTX) is a condition that occurs frequently at the beginning of pregnancy, and it correlates with cognitive impairment, autism, and attentional deficit in the offspring. Evidence in animal models suggests that gestational HTX can increase the susceptibility of the offspring to develop strong inflammation in immune-mediated inflammatory diseases. Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a frequent inflammatory bowel disease with unknown causes.

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Thyroid disorders are clinically characterized by alterations of L-3,5,3',5'-tetraiodothyronine (T), L-3,5,3'-triiodothyronine (T), and/or thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) levels in the blood. The most frequent thyroid disorders are hypothyroidism, hyperthyroidism, and hypothyroxinemia. These conditions affect cell differentiation, function, and metabolism.

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Introduction: Machine learning (ML) corresponds to a wide variety of methods that use mathematics, statistics and computational science to learn from multiple variables simultaneously. By means of pattern recognition, ML methods are able to find hidden correlations and accomplish accurate predictions regarding different conditions. ML has been successfully used to solve varied problems in different areas of science, such as psychology, economics, biology and chemistry.

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The origin of life possibly required processes in confined systems that facilitated simple chemical reactions and other more complex reactions impossible to achieve under the condition of infinite dilution. In this context, the self-assembly of micelles or vesicles derived from prebiotic amphiphilic molecules is a cornerstone in the chemical evolution pathway. A prime example of these building blocks is decanoic acid, a short-chain fatty acid capable of self-assembling under ambient conditions.

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Adequate iodine nutrition is fundamental for all humans and is critical during pregnancy and lactation due to iodine forms part of the structure of thyroid hormones (THs) and it is required for THs function. Iodine is a scarce micronutrient that must be obtained from the diet. Sufficient iodine can be found in the nature from seafood and given it is not frequently consumed by Chileans, public health policies state that table salt in Chile must be iodized.

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Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease characterized by a robust inflammatory response against myelin sheath antigens, which causes astrocyte and microglial activation and demyelination of the central nervous system (CNS). Multiple genetic predispositions and environmental factors are known to influence the immune response in autoimmune diseases, such as MS, and in the experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) model. Although the predisposition to suffer from MS seems to be a multifactorial process, a highly sensitive period is pregnancy due to factors that alter the development and differentiation of the CNS and the immune system, which increases the offspring's susceptibility to develop MS.

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Fetus and infants require appropriate thyroid hormone levels and iodine during pregnancy and lactation. Nature endorses the mother to supply thyroid hormones to the fetus and iodine to the lactating infant. Genetic variations on thyroid proteins that cause dyshormonogenic congenital hypothyroidism could in pregnant and breastfeeding women impair the delivery of thyroid hormones and iodine to the offspring.

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Isothermal Titration Calorimetry (ITC) is widely employed to assess antimicrobial affinity for lipopolysaccharide (LPS); nevertheless, experiments are usually limited to commercially available-LPS chemotypes. Herein we show a method that uses Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) to characterize homogeneity artificial vesicles of LPS (LPS-V) extracted from isogenic mutant bacterial strains before analyzing the antimicrobial binding by ITC. This method allows us to characterize the differences in the Polymyxin-B binding and gel to crystalline liquid (β↔α) phase profiles of LPS-V made of LPS extracted from isogenic mutant strains for the LPS biosynthesis pathway, allowing us to obtain the comparable data required for new antimicrobial discovery.

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Background: Several countries have documented the relationship between long-term exposure to air pollutants and epidemiological indicators of the COVID-19 pandemic, such as incidence and mortality. This study aims to explore the association between air pollutants, such as PM and PM, and the incidence and mortality rates of COVID-19 during 2020.

Methods: The incidence and mortality rates were estimated using the COVID-19 cases and deaths from the Chilean Ministry of Science, and the population size was obtained from the Chilean Institute of Statistics.

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Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an increasingly prevalent progressive autoimmune and debilitating chronic disease that involves the detrimental recognition of central nervous system (CNS) antigens by the immune system. Although significant progress has been made in the last decades on the biology of MS and the identification of novel therapies to treat its symptoms, the etiology of this disease remains unknown. However, recent studies have suggested that viral infections may contribute to disease onset.

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Little is known about the consequences of viral infection for pregnant woman or for the fetus. This issue became important with the appearance of the severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). The infection with SARS-CoV-2 causes a respiratory syndrome known as COVID-19.

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The World Health Organization (WHO) announced in March a pandemic caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). This new infectious disease was named Coronavirus Disease 19 (COVID-19), and at October 2020, more than 39,000,000 cases of SARS-CoV-2 have been detected worldwide leading to near 1,100,000 deaths. Clinically, COVID-19 is characterized by clinical manifestations, such as fever, dry cough, headache, and in more severe cases, respiratory distress.

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Adequate iodine nutrition is crucial for all mammals by playing his starring role as a component of thyroid hormones, which are key regulators of cellular processes for life such as differentiation, growth, function, and metabolism. Deficiency or excess of iodine in the diet are worldwide highly frequent conditions that are responsible of health problems like hypothyroidism, hypothyroxinemia, goiter, thyroiditis, hyperthyroidism, and autoimmune thyroid diseases among others. The incorporation of iodine in salt or other nutrients resolved the consequences of severe iodine deficiency like goiter, cretinism.

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The human respiratory syncytial virus (hRSV) is the most common infectious agent that affects children before two years of age. hRSV outbreaks cause a significant increase in hospitalizations during the winter season associated with bronchiolitis and pneumonia. Recently, neurologic alterations have been associated with hRSV infection in children, which include seizures, central apnea, and encephalopathy.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study aimed to explore how menopause affects cardiovascular risk factors among adult women in Chile using data from the National Health Survey (2016-2017).
  • - Out of 2,139 women surveyed, 67% were menopausal, and results showed that menopausal women had significantly higher systolic blood pressure and were more likely to have hypertension and diabetes compared to non-menopausal women.
  • - Despite the increase in certain cardiovascular risks, menopause was not linked to obesity, abdominal obesity, or metabolic syndrome in the studied population.
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Mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) activation within adipose tissue, triggers inflammation and metabolic syndrome development. The pharmacological blockade of MR provides beneficial effects for adipose tissue. Our study evaluates the impact of eplerenone implantation upon obesity.

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Background: The hantavirus infection is an emerging zoonotic disease, endemic in Chile, generating the hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome (HCPS), characterized by cardiopulmonary dysfunction with rapidly progressive respiratory failure and high lethality. For an early clinical orientation of HCPS, due to its non-specificity in symptoms and to help the differential diagnosis, some laboratory parameter that may be useful have been studied.

Aim: To identify laboratory criteria as predictive factors of HCPS in patients with suspected hantavirus infection.

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  • Elevated levels of total aluminum (Al) in natural waters often stem from acid extraction of Al from suspended solids, creating a need for methods to measure bioavailable Al specifically.
  • In a study involving Ceriodaphnia dubia, high total suspended solids (TSS) from natural waters were found to inhibit reproduction by up to 40% due to nutritional deficiencies, rather than total Al levels.
  • A new extraction method at pH 4 was developed to better differentiate bioavailable Al's chronic toxicity effects from non-toxic mineral forms, suggesting its use for assessing Al toxicity in natural surface waters.
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Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) has been associated with a higher risk of developing cardiovascular (CV) diseases. It has been proposed that systemic inflammation plays a key role in premature atherosclerosis development, and is therefore crucial to determine whether systemic components from RA patients promotes endothelial cell-oxidative stress by affecting reactive oxygen species (ROS) and nitric-oxide (NO) production. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether plasma from RA patients impair NO synthesis and ROS production by using the cell-line ECV-304 as a biosensor.

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Hypothyroxinemia (Hpx) is a thyroid hormone deficiency (THD) condition highly frequent during pregnancy, which although asymptomatic for the mother, it can impair the cognitive function of the offspring. Previous studies have shown that maternal hypothyroidism increases the severity of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), an autoimmune disease model for multiple sclerosis (MS). Here, we analyzed the immune response after EAE induction in the adult offspring gestated in Hpx.

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