Sex-Specific Adherence to the Mediterranean Diet in Obese Individuals.

Adherence to the Mediterranean diet (MedDiet) has long been associated with several health benefits, including a reduced risk of heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. The MedDiet is characterized by a high consumption of foods such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fish, and olive oil, along with a moderate intake of red meat and red wine with meals. Some studies report significant differences between men and women in susceptibility to obesity, with women at a higher prevalence of obesity than men.

Notch3-regulated microRNAs impair CXCR4-dependent maturation of thymocytes allowing maintenance and progression of T-ALL.

Malignant transformation of T-cell progenitors causes T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL), an aggressive childhood lymphoproliferative disorder. Activating mutations of Notch, Notch1 and Notch3, have been detected in T-ALL patients. In this study, we aimed to deeply characterize hyperactive Notch3-related pathways involved in T-cell dynamics within the thymus and bone marrow to propose these processes as an important step in facilitating the progression of T-ALL.

Sustainability Perception of Italian Consumers: Is it Possible to Replace Meat, and What Is the Best Alternative?

Growing worldwide food demand with its environmental impacts requires a reshaping of food consumption. This study aims to evaluate the degree of Italian consumers' awareness of sustainability and whether protein alternatives to meat could be accepted. A cross-sectional survey was carried out on a group of 815 respondents, representative of the Italian adult population for geography, gender, and age, using multivariate analysis together with cluster analysis.

Insight into immune profile associated with vitiligo onset and anti-tumoral response in melanoma patients receiving anti-PD-1 immunotherapy.

Introduction: Immunotherapy with checkpoint inhibitors is an efficient treatment for metastatic melanoma. Development of vitiligo upon immunotherapy represents a specific immune-related adverse event (irAE) diagnosed in 15% of patients and associated with a positive clinical response. Therefore, a detailed characterization of immune cells during vitiligo onset in melanoma patients would give insight into the immune mechanisms mediating both the irAE and the anti-tumor response.

Long-term longitudinal study on swine VML model.

Background: Volumetric Muscle Loss (VML), resulting from severe trauma or surgical ablation, is a pathological condition preventing myofibers regeneration, since skeletal muscle owns the remarkable ability to restore tissue damage, but only when limited in size. The current surgical therapies employed in the treatment of this pathology, which particularly affects military personnel, do not yet provide satisfactory results. For this reason, more innovative approaches must be sought, specifically skeletal muscle tissue engineering seems to highlight promising results obtained from preclinical studies in VML mouse model.

Consumers' Attitude towards Sustainability in Italy: Process of Validation of a Duly Designed Questionnaire.

This study aimed to describe the process of validation of a questionnaire assessing Italian consumers’ perception of food sustainability. The study has a multiphase design. Phase 1 consisted in translating and structuring the questionnaire.

Robust HIV-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell responses distinguish elite control in adolescents living with HIV from viremic nonprogressors.

Background: Elite controllers are therapy-naive individuals living with HIV capable of spontaneous control of plasma viraemia for at least a year. Although viremic nonprogressors are more common in vertical HIV-infection than in adults' infection, elite control has been rarely characterized in the pediatric population.

Design: We analyzed the T-cell immunophenotype and the HIV-specific response by flow cytometry in four pediatric elite controllers (PECs) compared with age-matched nonprogressors (PNPs), progressors and HIV-exposed uninfected (HEUs) adolescents.

Immune Soluble Factors in the Cerebrospinal Fluid of Progressive Multiple Sclerosis Patients Segregate Into Two Groups.

Primary-progressive (PP) and secondary-progressive (SP) multiple sclerosis (MS) are characterized by neurological deficits caused by a permanent neuronal damage, clinically quantified by the expanded disability status scale (EDSS). Neuronal tissue damage is also mediated by immune infiltrates producing soluble factors, such as cytokines and chemokines, which are released in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). The mechanisms regulating the production of a soluble factor are not completely defined.

Using the MINT Database to Search Protein Interactions.

The Molecular INTeractions Database (MINT) is a public database designed to store information about protein interactions. Protein interactions are extracted from scientific literature and annotated in the database by expert curators. Currently (October 2019), MINT contains information on more than 26,000 proteins and more than 131,600 interactions in over 30 model organisms.

SIGNOR 2.0, the SIGnaling Network Open Resource 2.0: 2019 update.

The SIGnaling Network Open Resource 2.0 (SIGNOR 2.0) is a public repository that stores signaling information as binary causal relationships between biological entities.

Strong sex bias in elite control of paediatric HIV infection.

Background: Reports of posttreatment control following antiretroviral therapy (ART) have prompted the question of how common immune control of HIV infection is in the absence of ART. In contrast to adult infection, where elite controllers have been very well characterized and constitute approximately 0.5% of infections, very few data exist to address this question in paediatric infection.

DISNOR: a disease network open resource.

DISNOR is a new resource that aims at exploiting the explosion of data on the identification of disease-associated genes to assemble inferred disease pathways. This may help dissecting the signaling events whose disruption causes the pathological phenotypes and may contribute to build a platform for precision medicine. To this end we combine the gene-disease association (GDA) data annotated in the DisGeNET resource with a new curation effort aimed at populating the SIGNOR database with causal interactions related to disease genes with the highest possible coverage.

Home infusion program with enzyme replacement therapy for Fabry disease: The experience of a large Italian collaborative group.

Fabry disease (FD) [OMIM 301500] is an X-linked lysosomal storage disorder caused by a deficiency of the lysosomal enzyme alpha-galactosidase A, resulting in progressive multisystem accumulation of globotriaosylceramide (Gb3). Although the introduction of Enzyme Replacement Therapy (ERT) resulted in a variety of clinical benefits, life-long intravenous (IV) treatment with ERT with an every other week schedule, may interfere with daily life activities and impact on QoL. We report here a multicentric, observational, longitudinal data analysis on a large cohort of 85 Italian FD patients (45 males, 40 females) from 11 out of 20 Italian regions, who received a cumulative number of 4269 home infusions of agalsidase alfa.

Added clinical value of applying myocardial deformation imaging to assess right ventricular function.

Right heart dysfunction has been found to be a strong prognostic factor predicting adverse outcome in various cardiopulmonary diseases. Conventional echocardiographic measurements can be limited by geometrical assumptions and impaired reproducibility. Speckle tracking-derived strain provides a robust quantification of right ventricular function.

Physiologic Determinants of Left Atrial Longitudinal Strain: A Two-Dimensional Speckle-Tracking and Three-Dimensional Echocardiographic Study in Healthy Volunteers.

Background: Left atrial (LA) longitudinal strain (LS) using two-dimensional speckle-tracking echocardiography has emerged as an important diagnostic and prognostic parameter in various cardiovascular conditions. However, its reference values, their correlations with demographics characteristics, and its physiologic determinants remain to be established.

Methods: Accordingly, 171 healthy volunteers (mean age, 45 ± 12 years; 61% women) in whom LS was obtained from both apical four- and two-chamber dedicated views of the left atrium, considering the P-P interval on the electrocardiogram as the reference cardiac cycle, were prospectively studied.

Left Atrial Volumes and Function by Three-Dimensional Echocardiography: Reference Values, Accuracy, Reproducibility, and Comparison With Two-Dimensional Echocardiographic Measurements.

Background: Our study sought to (1) identify reference values for left atrial (LA) volumes and phasic function indices by 3-dimensional echocardiography (3DE) and compare them with those measured by 2-dimensional echocardiography (2DE) and (2) analyze their relationship with age, sex, body size, and left ventricular function. Accuracy and reproducibility of 3DE and 2DE have been also tested to evaluate the robustness of our data.

Methods And Results: We obtained maximal, minimal, and preA LA volumes by 3DE and 2DE in 276 healthy volunteers (18-79 years; 57% women).

Contrasting Plasticity in Ovariole Number Induced by A Dietary Effect of the Host Plants between Cactophilic Drosophila Species.

Under the preference-performance hypothesis, natural selection will favor females that choose oviposition sites that optimize the fitness of their offspring. Such a preference-performance relationship may entail important consequences mainly on fitness-related traits. We used the well-characterized cactus-Drosophila system to investigate the reproductive capacity in the pair of sibling species D.

Sex- and Method-Specific Reference Values for Right Ventricular Strain by 2-Dimensional Speckle-Tracking Echocardiography.

Background: Despite the fact that assessment of right ventricular longitudinal strain (RVLS) carries important implications for patient diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment, its implementation in clinical settings has been hampered by the limited reference values and the lack of uniformity in software, method, and definition used for measuring RVLS. Accordingly, this study was designed to establish (1) the reference values for RVLS by 2-dimensional speckle-tracking echocardiography; and (2) their relationship with demographic, hemodynamic, and cardiac factors.

Methods And Results: In 276 healthy volunteers (55% women; age, 18-76 years), free wall and septum RVLS (6 segments) and free wall RVLS (3 segments) using both 6- and 3-segment regions of interest were obtained.

Unusual echocardiographic appearance of a cardiac metastasis from lung carcinoma.

During hospitalization in the Oncology Department, a woman with nonsmall cell lung cancer and no previous cardiac event complained of episodes of chest pain and palpitations. Preliminary instrumental examinations diagnosed atrial fibrillation in pericarditis. A subsequent complete transthoracic echocardiogram showed the presence of a large mass involving the left ventricular apex, without echo-contrast enhancement.

SIGNOR: a database of causal relationships between biological entities.

Assembly of large biochemical networks can be achieved by confronting new cell-specific experimental data with an interaction subspace constrained by prior literature evidence. The SIGnaling Network Open Resource, SIGNOR (available on line at http://signor.uniroma2.

Evaluation of right ventricular function performed by 3D-echocardiography in scleroderma patients.

The impairment of the right ventricle (RV) in systemic sclerosis (SSc) is usually related to pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). New echocardiographic techniques, such as 3-dimensional echocardiography (3DE) and 2-dimensional speckle tracking (2DSTE), allow an accurate evaluation of the RV function. The aim of this study was to evaluate the RV function using 3DE and 2DSTE in SSc patients with no history of heart disease and no PAH.

Normal mitral annulus dynamics and its relationships with left ventricular and left atrial function.

Mitral annulus (MA) geometry and dynamics are crucial for preserving normal mitral valve (MV) function. Static reference values for MA parameters have been reported, but the normal MA dynamics during the entire cardiac cycle remains controversial. MV full-volume datasets were obtained by three-dimensional transthoracic echocardiography from 50 healthy volunteers (18-74 years; 31 men) to assess MA changes in size and shape during entire cardiac cycle.