Publications by authors named "Pascual D"

People with chronic pain mitigate their suffering by the action of opioids. Adverse reactions aside, opioids are not exempt from potential complications like addiction and abuse, which have posed a global public health problem lately. Finding new therapeutic strategies to improve analgesia and to reduce opioid side effects has become a priority.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The review aims to explore potential biomarkers in blood and cerebrospinal fluid for diagnosing and treating neuropathic pain, given the incomplete understanding of this condition.
  • - A systematic search of six research databases led to analyzing 16 studies, revealing no significant differences in inflammatory biomarkers (CRP, IL-6, TNF-alpha) between patients with neuropathic pain and those without.
  • - Results highlight the complexity of neuropathic pain, showing methodological strengths but limited by publication bias and variability in study findings, indicating the necessity for further research to identify reliable biomarkers.
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Optical biometers are routinely used to measure intraocular distances in ophthalmic applications such as cataract surgery planning or myopia monitoring. However, due to their high cost and reduced transportability, access to them for screening and surgical planning is still limited in low-resource and remote settings. To increase patients' access to optical biometry we propose a novel low-cost frequency-domain optical delay line (FD-ODL) based on an inexpensive stepper motor spinning a tilted mirror, for integration into a time-domain (TD)-biometer, amenable to a compact footprint.

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The last decade has been highlighted by the increased use of next-generation DNA sequencing technology to identify novel human disease genes. A critical downstream part of this process is assigning function to a candidate gene variant. Functional studies in , the common fruit fly, have made a prominent contribution in annotating variant impact in an in vivo system.

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Susceptibility to brucellosis remains prevalent, even in herds vaccinated with conventional vaccines. Efforts are underway to develop an improved brucellosis vaccine, and possibly a universal vaccine, given that species are highly homologous. To this end, two mutants were developed, znBM- (znBMZ) and znBM-mCherry (znBM-mC), and were tested for their ability to confer systemic immunity against virulent challenge.

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Sjögren's Syndrome (SjS) results in loss of salivary and lacrimal gland excretion due to an autoimmune attack on these secretory glands. Conventional SjS treatments address the symptoms, but not the cause of disease. Recognizing this deficit of treatments to reverse SjS disease, studies were pursued using the fimbriae from enterotoxigenic E.

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Microelectrode arrays (MEAs) have proven to be a powerful tool to study electrophysiological processes over the last decades with most technology developed for investigation of the heart or brain. Other targets in the field of bioelectronic medicine are the peripheral nervous system and its innervation of various organs. Beyond the heart and nervous systems, the beta cells of the pancreatic islets of Langerhans generate action potentials during the production of insulin.

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Sjögren's syndrome (SS) is a chronic autoimmune disease characterized by inflammatory cell infiltration of the salivary and lacrimal glands, resulting in acinar epithelial cell atrophy, cell death, and loss of exocrine function. At least half of SS patients develop extraglandular inflammatory disease and have a wide range of systemic clinical manifestations that can affect any organ system, including connective tissues. As many as 3.

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Background: Revascularization of left main coronary artery (LMCA) stenosis is mostly based on angiography. Indices based on angiography might increase accuracy of the decision, although they have been scarcely used in LMCA. The objective of this study is to study the diagnostic agreement of QFR (quantitative flow ratio) with wire-based fractional flow reserve (FFR) in LMCA lesions and to compare with visual severity assessment.

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The Brucella abortus double-mutant (ΔznuA ΔnorD Brucella abortus-lacZ [znBAZ]) was assessed for its protective efficacy after vaccination with a single nasal dose. Superior protection was achieved in znBAZ-vaccinated mice against pulmonary, wild-type B. abortus 2308 challenge when compared with conventional livestock Brucella abortus vaccines, the smooth S19 (smooth B.

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Brucellosis is a disease of livestock that is commonly asymptomatic until an abortion occurs. Disease in humans results from contact of infected livestock or consumption of contaminated milk or meat. zoonosis is primarily caused by one of three species that infect livestock, in cattle, in goats and sheep, and in pigs.

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Re-emerging zoonotic pathogen spp. continues to impact developing countries and persists in expanding populations of wildlife species in the US, constantly threatening infection of our domestic herds. The development of improved animal and human vaccines remains a priority.

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Small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) produced by antigen-presenting cells represent a novel mechanism of cell-to-cell communication. The sEVs have been shown to drive Th1-type adaptive immune responses against intracellular infections such as Salmonella. In this study, we have demonstrated that an administration of sEVs produced by Salmonella-infected macrophages to BALB/c mice that were then challenged with Salmonella infection decreased bacterial load in infected animals and led to protection against a lethal dose of Salmonella.

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A catalytic system based on earth-abundant elements that efficiently hydrogenates aryl olefins using visible light as the driving-force and HO as the sole hydrogen atom source is reported. The catalytic system involves a robust and well-defined aminopyridine cobalt complex and a heteroleptic Cu photoredox catalyst. The system shows the reduction of styrene in aqueous media with a remarkable selectivity (>20 000) water reduction (WR).

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The role of spinal glia in the development and maintenance of chronic pain has become over the last years a subject of increasing interest. In this regard, toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) signaling has been proposed as a major trigger mechanism. Hence, in this study we explored the implications of TLR4 inhibition in the periphery and primarily in the CNS, focusing on the impact this inhibition renders in pain development and glia activation in the dorsal horn in two models of pain.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study reveals a new method for activating inert alkyl chlorides (chloroalkanes) using photoredox catalysis, allowing them to participate in cross-coupling reactions with alkenes.
  • The catalytic system involves a nickel complex for activating the Csp-Cl bond and an iridium compound as the photoredox catalyst, leading to the formation of reactive carbon-centered free radicals.
  • This research indicates that traditionally inactive alkyl chlorides can now be utilized as electrophiles, opening up possibilities for new chemical reactions using nickel complexes as catalysts.
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Purpose: The aim of the present investigation is to study the relationship of ventricular global longitudinal strain (GLS) and ultrasound lung comets (ULC) formation to establish a link between extravascular pulmonary water formation and cardiac contractile dysfunction.

Methods: This is a prospective observational study including 14 active military divers. The subjects performed two sea dives of 120 min each with a semi-closed SCUBA circuit at 10 m depth.

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  • Human WHO grade 1 meningiomas, although typically benign, are responsible for about 50% of recurrent cases, highlighting the need for more research on their genetic profiles and patient outcomes.
  • The study investigated 32 grade 1 meningiomas through whole exome sequencing, revealing diverse genetic variants mainly affecting specific genes, with distinct profiles linked to patient recurrence-free survival (RFS).
  • The analysis identified four genetic profiles related to prognosis: two good-prognosis subgroups with high RFS rates and two poor-prognosis subgroups with significantly lower RFS rates, emphasizing the complexity of these tumors and their impact on treatment outcomes.*
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Chronic pain remains a major problem worldwide, despite the availability of various non-pharmacological and pharmacological treatment options. Therefore, new analgesics with novel mechanisms of action are needed. Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are directed against specific, targeted molecules involved in pain signaling and processing pathways that look to be very effective and promising as a novel therapy in pain management.

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Introduction: Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) is a pattern recognition receptor involved in the detection of pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs), but also a "danger-sensing" receptor that recognizes host-derived endogenous molecules called damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs). The involvement of TLR4 in rheumatic diseases is becoming evident, as well as its potential role as a target for therapeutic intervention. Moreover, increasing evidence also suggests that TLR4 is implicated in chronic pain states.

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Colonization factor antigen I (CFA/I) fimbria, an adhesin from enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli, confers protection in murine autoimmune models for type 1 diabetes (T1D), multiple sclerosis, and rheumatoid arthritis. Although CFA/I fimbriae's initial mode of action is in a bystander or in an antigen (Ag)-independent fashion, protection is ultimately dependent upon the induction and/or activation of auto-Ag-specific regulatory T cells (Tregs). However, little is known about how protection transitions from bystander suppression to Ag-specific Tregs.

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Past studies with the live, double-mutant  (znBAZ) strain resulted in nearly complete protection of mice against pulmonary challenge with wild-type (wt) a dominant CD8 T cell response. To understand the contribution innate immune cells in priming CD8 T cell responses, mice were nasally dosed with wt , smooth vaccine strain 19 (S19), or znBAZ, and examined for innate immune cell activation. Flow cytometric analysis revealed that znBAZ, but not wt nor S19 infection, induces up to a 5-fold increase in the frequency of IFN-γ-producing NK cells in mouse lungs.

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Introduction And Objectives: Transcatheter aortic valve implant has become a widely accepted treatment for inoperable patients with aortic stenosis and patients at high surgical risk. Its indications have recently been expanded to include patients at intermediate and low surgical risk. Our aim was to evaluate the efficiency of SAPIEN 3 vs conservative medical treatment (CMT) or surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR) in symptomatic inoperable patients at high or intermediate risk.

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