Publications by authors named "Parra R"

Background: The inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) disk is a simple and quick method to assess the level of disability experienced by patients with IBD. It has been already translated and validated in European countries, however it was not yet translated and validated to use in Brazil.

Objective: This study was performed to translate and validate a Brazilian version of the IBD-Disk.

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  • Climate change is causing shifts in animal habitats, particularly affecting the distribution of threatened marine species like whale sharks.
  • Projections indicate that by 2100, whale sharks could lose more than 50% of their core habitat in some areas, with significant geographic shifts that could place them in closer proximity to large ships.
  • The increase in whale shark interaction with shipping is expected to be dramatically higher under high emission scenarios compared to sustainable development, highlighting the urgency for better climate-threat predictions in conservation strategies for endangered marine life.
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  • - Chromothripsis is a process where a single catastrophic event causes significant genomic rearrangements, but its variability across different tumor clones and response to treatments is not well understood.
  • - This study investigates chromothripsis in p53-deficient medulloblastoma and neural stem cells, focusing on the genomic and transcriptomic changes involved.
  • - The researchers analyze the order of genetic events, explore subclonal variation, and identify how chromothripsis influences cancer development, targeted therapies, and the fitness of neural progenitor cells.
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  • - Age estimation is vital for identifying deceased individuals, and this study focuses on using dental characteristics to improve age estimation methods in Brazil, particularly by validating the Forensic International Dental Database (FIDB).
  • - Researchers conducted a study with 230 dental samples to compare the FIDB Bayesian model against Lamendin's simplified technique, ensuring the reliability of their data through thorough examiner training and statistical analysis.
  • - The final analysis included 200 dental elements, revealing no significant differences in age estimation between sexes, and overall accuracy showed comparable results between the Bayesian model and Lamendin's technique.
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The work presented a general discrete-time model of a population of trees affected by a parasite. The tree population was considered size-structured, and the parasite was represented by a single scalar variable. Parasite dynamics were assumed to act on a faster timescale than tree dynamics.

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Context: The strength and nature of the two halogen bonds in the NCI···CHI···CN halogen-bonded ternary complex are studied in the gas phase via ab initio calculations. Different indicators of halogen bond strength were employed to examine the interactions including geometries, complexation energies, Natural Bond Order (NBO) Wiberg bond indices, and Atoms in Molecules (AIM)-based charge density topological properties. The results show that the halogen bond is strong and partly covalent in nature when CHI donates the halogen bond, but weak and noncovalent in nature when CHI accepts the halogen bond.

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The aim of this study is to validate the FIDBv2 online procedure for adult age-at-death estimation using root dentine translucency (RDT) and periodontal retraction (PR) of single-rooted teeth in a worldwide sample. The sample includes 4810 teeth of 2559 individuals from 16 countries of America, Europe and Asia. Bias and inaccuracy between documented (DA) and estimated ages (EA) were calculated.

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  • Fold-switching allows proteins to alternate between two very different shapes to control their functions.
  • Researchers have identified about 100 proteins that can do this, but determining which specific amino acids are crucial to this process is difficult.
  • By using simulations and analyzing energetic frustration, the study examined the fold-switching of RfaH and found 20 important amino acids whose frustration changes during this process, providing insights for studying other proteins with similar behavior.
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  • Current methods to predict sudden cardiac death (SCD) in children with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) are insufficient, although late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) in CMR imaging has shown a link to SCD in adults.
  • This study aimed to assess the significance of LGE in HCM patients under 21 years, utilizing data from various international centers between 2015 and 2022.
  • Results indicated that 32.9% of the 700 patients had LGE, and those with LGE were more likely to experience SCD or related events, emphasizing the potential role of LGE in clinical assessments for younger patients with HCM.
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Tumor hypoxia may compromise the results of chemotherapy for treating colorectal cancer because it stimulates angiogenesis and the release of tumor growth factors. Hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) supplementation may potentiate the effects of chemotherapy in such cases. This study aimed to assess the effect of HBO therapy combined with chemotherapy on the treatment of colorectal cancer in mice.

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Orthodontic brackets and archwires placed intraorally are subject to corrosion, leading to the release of cytotoxic metal ions. The aim of this study was to determine whether the use of orthodontic NiTi archwires increases systemic Ni levels and cause alterations on the DNA of cells unrelated to the oral environment such as lymphocytes and sperm cells. Human urine, semen and blood samples were collected before (baseline) sham placement of orthodontic archwires and 15 and 30 days after placement.

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Background And Aims: Quality of life in patients with active Crohn's disease may be significantly reduced. We evaluated the effects of upadacitinib induction and maintenance therapy on fatigue, quality of life, and work productivity in the phase 3 trials U-EXCEL, U-EXCEED, and U-ENDURE.

Methods: Clinical responders to upadacitinib 45 mg in U-EXCEL and U-EXCEED induction trials were re-randomised 1:1:1 to upadacitinib 30 mg, 15 mg, or placebo for 52 weeks of maintenance in U-ENDURE.

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Skeletal evidence usually constitutes the only source of information to interpret lesion patterns that help to clarify the circumstances surrounding death. The examination and interpretation of bone trauma are essential to the application and utility of anthropology as a forensic science. When discussing the effect of gunshot wounds in bone, it becomes imperative to differentiate between short and long-distance injuries based on clear, distinct, and observable signs.

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The expansion of the world's merchant fleet poses a great threat to the ocean's biodiversity. Collisions between ships and marine megafauna can have population-level consequences for vulnerable species. The Endangered whale shark (Rhincodon typus) shares a circumglobal distribution with this expanding fleet and tracking of movement pathways has shown that large vessel collisions pose a major threat to the species.

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  • A study was conducted in Brazil to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of ustekinumab (UST) in treating ulcerative colitis (UC), a condition with limited real-world data in Latin America.
  • The research included 50 patients with moderate-to-severe UC, focusing on their clinical and endoscopic remission after one year of UST treatment; 50% achieved clinical remission, while 36% achieved endoscopic remission.
  • The safety profile revealed that 20% of patients were hospitalized and 18% discontinued the drug mainly due to lack of effectiveness, but the treatment persistence rate at 24 months was 73.7%.
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Purpose: To evaluate patient characteristics and factors associated with surgical resection in patients with Crohn's disease (CD).

Methods: An analysis was performed on data from 295 patients with CD in follow-up from 2001 to 2018. Medical record data comprised age, gender, location, behavior and duration of the CD, smoking, and extraintestinal manifestation.

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According to the Principle of Minimal Frustration, folded proteins can only have a minimal number of strong energetic conflicts in their native states. However, not all interactions are energetically optimized for folding but some remain in energetic conflict, i.e.

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Although perianal Crohn's disease (PCD) is highly associated with the exacerbated inflammation, the molecular basis and immunological signature that distinguish patients who present a history of perianal lesions are still unclear. This paper aims to define immunological characteristics related to PCD. In this cross-sectional observational study, we enrolled 20 healthy controls and 39 CD patients.

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  • Upadacitinib (UPA) is an oral treatment approved for Crohn's disease (CD) that aims for quick symptomatic relief in patients.
  • A study pooled data from three trials to investigate how quickly patients experienced improvement in stool frequency and abdominal pain when treated with UPA or a placebo.
  • Results showed that patients on UPA saw significant improvements within 5-6 days, achieving remission faster than those on placebo, leading to higher rates of clinical remission and response by week 2.
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Takayasu arteritis (TA) is a large-vessel vasculitis that rarely presents in infancy. Casitas B-lineage lymphoma (CBL) syndrome is a rare genetic disorder due to heterozygous CBL gene germline pathogenic variants that is characterized by a predisposition to develop juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia (JMML). Vasculitis, including TA, has been reported in several patients.

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  • The Brazilian Organization for Crohn's Disease and Colitis (GEDIIB) created a national registry to study factors linked to the severity of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) among Brazilian patients.
  • The study included 1,179 patients, primarily diagnosed with ulcerative colitis (UC) or Crohn's Disease (CD), and found that many had extensive disease, with a significant portion needing biologic treatments.
  • Factors like age, disease extent, and certain complications increased the severity of IBD, particularly for those with extensive colitis or specific disease behaviors.
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More than three decades have passed since the publication of Lamendin et al.'s proposal in 1992. Over this time, numerous investigations have been conducted to assess the applicability of the technique in different populations with acceptable results in terms of estimation errors.

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Unlabelled: Fracture-related infection (FRI) is a common complication following open tibia fracture (OTF), especially in patients with high-energy trauma or comorbidities. The use of gentamicin-coated nail (GCN) has been proposed as a local adjuvant to prevent FRI in high-risk patients.

Hypothesis: The incidence of FRI is expected to be lower in OTF treated with a GCN, alongside with no detrimental effects on fracture healing time.

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Energetic local frustration offers a biophysical perspective to interpret the effects of sequence variability on protein families. Here we present a methodology to analyze local frustration patterns within protein families and superfamilies that allows us to uncover constraints related to stability and function, and identify differential frustration patterns in families with a common ancestry. We analyze these signals in very well studied protein families such as PDZ, SH3, ɑ and β globins and RAS families.

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Background: In real-world experience, the number of patients using vedolizumab as first-line biological therapy was low. We aimed to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of vedolizumab in mild-to-moderate Crohn's disease (CD) biologic-naïve patients.

Methods: We performed a retrospective multicentric cohort study with patients who had clinical activity scores (Harvey-Bradshaw Index [HBI]) measured at baseline and weeks 12, 26, 52, as well as at the last follow-up.

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