Publications by authors named "Prete E"

Background: informal caregivers of people with dementia are at greater risk of developing physical and mental health problems when compared to the general population: they often experience high levels of stress which can lead to a lowered sense of well-being, feelings of being burdened, depression and compromised physical health. The significant beneficial effects of Psychoeducational Interventions on the critical outcomes of caregiver burden and strain were considered sufficient to warrant a recommendation in favour of the intervention. The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly increased the use internet-based interventions: this study describes the effectiveness of support program for informal caregivers of people with dementia internet-based and on-site conditions.

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Background: Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP) is a rare, heterogeneous neurodegenerative disease for which no treatment is currently available. In the context of clinical trials, the representativeness of the included patients is crucial for the generalizability of the results. Herein, we present results from a multicenter perspective study to identify the most restrictive criteria for patient selection and to assess the representativeness of eligible patients.

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Lymphoma and plasma cell disorders are the most common indications for autologous hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) transplantation. We conducted a prospective multicenter study with the aim of testing the feasibility of plerixafor (PLX) in combination with R-DHAP and G-CSF in 37 patients with relapsed refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (R/R DLBCL) in order to collect a large number of HSC with a goal of transplantation. After R-DHAP, daily monitoring of peripheral blood CD34 + cells by flow cytometry was performed starting on day + 13.

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Objectives: Neuropsychiatric symptoms, such as apathy, disinhibition and irritability, are common in Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP). The Frontal Behaviour Inventory (FBI) is a useful instrument for the evaluation of behavioural disorders in neurodegenerative diseases. The main goal of the present study was to explore the psychometric properties of the FBI in PSP.

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Gyrate atrophy of the choroid and retina (GACR) is due to ornithine aminotransferase (OAT) deficiency, which causes hyperornithinemia, leading to retinal pigment epithelium, followed by choroidal and retinal degeneration. Adeno-associated virus serotype 8 (AAV8) vector-mediated OAT (AAV8-OAT) liver gene transfer reduces ornithinemia in the Oat mouse model of GACR and improves retinal function and structure. Since OAT is expressed in various tissues including the retina, we investigated the efficacy of restoration of OAT expression in either retina or liver or both tissues on the retinal phenotype of Oat mice.

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Background: The opioid epidemic continues to be associated with high numbers of fatalities in the USA and other countries, driven mainly by the inclusion of potent synthetic opioids in street drugs. Drug checking by means of various technologies is being increasingly implemented as a harm reduction strategy to inform users about constituent drugs in their street samples. We assessed how valued drug checking services (DCS) would be for opioid street drug users given the ubiquity of fentanyl and related analogs in the drug supply, the information they would most value from drug checking, and compared expected versus actual constituent drugs in collected samples.

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Background: To date, evaluations of take-home fentanyl (and/or benzodiazepine) test strip use - the most common form of drug checking services - and potential effects on overdose risk have relied on retrospective accounts for some preceding time period, usually a week to several months. Such accounts, however, are subject to recall and memory biases. This pilot study assessed the feasibility of using experiential sampling to collect daily information in situ on drug checking and associated overdose risk reduction - the primary outcomes - among a sample of street opioid users and compared the results to retrospective reports.

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Background: Myoclonus-dystonia (MD) is a syndrome characterized by subcortical myoclonus and milder dystonia. The main causative gene is the epsilon sarcoglycan gene (SGCE), but other genes may be involved. Response to medications is variable, with poor tolerability limiting their use.

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Background: Inherited retinal diseases (IRD) are genetically heterogeneous disorders that cause the dysfunction or loss of photoreceptor cells and ultimately lead to blindness. To date, next-generation sequencing procedures fail to detect pathogenic sequence variants in coding regions of known IRD disease genes in about 30-40% of patients. One of the possible explanations for this missing heritability is the presence of yet unidentified transcripts of known IRD genes.

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Drug checking services are being utilized worldwide to provide people who use drugs information on the composition and contents of their drugs as a tool for harm reduction and accidental overdose prevention. Existing drug checking services use a variety of techniques including immunoassay strips and spectroscopic techniques like FTIR and Raman. Few services utilize LC-MS based methods for primary or secondary analysis and few methods exist for direct analysis of illicit drugs.

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Background: Readmissions are hospitalizations following a previous hospitalization (called index hospitalization) of the same patient that occurred in the same facility or nursing home. They may be a consequence of the progression of the natural history of a disease, but they may also reveal a previous suboptimal stay, or ineffective management of the underlying clinical condition. Preventing avoidable readmissions has the potential to improve both a patient's quality of life, by avoiding exposure to the risks of re-hospitalization, and the financial well-being of health care systems.

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To date, evaluations of take-home fentanyl (and/or benzodiazepine) test strip use - the most common form of drug checking services - and potential effects on overdose risk have relied on retrospective accounts for some preceding time period, usually a week to several months. Such accounts, however, are subject to recall and memory biases. This pilot study assessed the feasibility of using experiential sampling to collect daily information in situ on drug checking and associated overdose risk reduction - the primary outcomes - among a sample of street opioid users and compared the results to retrospective reports.

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Summary: ADViSELipidomics is a novel Shiny app for preprocessing, analyzing and visualizing lipidomics data. It handles the outputs from LipidSearch and LIQUID for lipid identification and quantification and the data from the Metabolomics Workbench. ADViSELipidomics extracts information by parsing lipid species (using LIPID MAPS classification) and, together with information available on the samples, performs several exploratory and statistical analyses.

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Background And Purpose: Changes in gut microbiota composition, enteric inflammation, impairments of the intestinal epithelial barrier and neuroplastic changes in the enteric nervous system have been reported in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients and could contribute to the onset of both neurological and gastrointestinal symptoms. However, their mutual interplay has rarely been investigated. This study evaluated, in an integrated manner, changes in faecal microbiota composition, morphofunctional alterations of colonic mucosal barrier and changes of inflammatory markers in blood and stools of PD patients.

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Objective: To develop and validate a weighted score, the ONCOREUM score, that aids physicians in differentiation of cancer with arthropathy from juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA).

Study Design: Data were extracted from the ONCOREUM Study, a multicenter, cross-sectional investigation aimed at comparing children with cancer and arthropathy to children with JIA. Three statistical approaches were applied to develop the ONCOREUM score and assess the role of each variable in the diagnosis of cancer with arthropathy, including 2 approaches based on multivariable stepwise selection (models 1 and 2) and 1 approach on a Bayesian model averaging method (model 3).

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: In early stages of disease, the differential diagnosis between Parkinson's Disease (PD) and atypical parkinsonism, such as Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP), could be challenging. Growing attention has recently been dedicated to investigating neuropsychological markers of degenerative parkinsonism. The Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test (ROCFT) copy score was hypothesized able to differentiate PSP from PD.

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A few cases of parkinsonism linked to COVID-19 infection have been reported so far, raising the possibility of a post-viral parkinsonian syndrome. The objective of this review is to summarize the clinical, biological, and neuroimaging features of published cases describing COVID-19-related parkinsonism and to discuss the possible pathophysiological mechanisms. A comprehensive literature search was performed using NCBI's PubMed database and standardized search terms.

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Idiopathic rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder (iRBD) is a prodromal stage of α-synucleinopathies, such as Parkinson's disease (PD), which are characterized by the loss of dopaminergic neurons in substantia nigra, associated with abnormal iron load. The assessment of presymptomatic biomarkers predicting the onset of neurodegenerative disorders is critical for monitoring early signs, screening patients for neuroprotective clinical trials and understanding the causal relationship between iron accumulation processes and disease development. Here, we used Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping (QSM) and 7T MRI to quantify iron deposition in Nigrosome 1 (N1) in early PD (ePD) patients, iRBD patients and healthy controls and investigated group differences and correlation with disease progression.

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Background And Purpose: In the quest for in vivo diagnostic biomarkers to discriminate Parkinson's disease (PD) from progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and multiple system atrophy (MSA, mainly p phenotype), many advanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques have been studied. Morphometric indices, such as the Magnetic Resonance Parkinsonism Index (MRPI), demonstrated high diagnostic value in the comparison between PD and PSP. The potential of quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) was hypothesized, as increased magnetic susceptibility (Δχ) was reported in the red nucleus (RN) and medial part of the substantia nigra (SNImed) of PSP patients and in the putamen of MSA patients.

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Objectives: Hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP) is a group of genetic neurodegenerative diseases characterised by upper motor neuron (UMN) impairment of the lower limbs. The differential diagnosis with primary lateral sclerosis (PLS) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) can be challenging. As microglial iron accumulation was reported in the primary motor cortex (PMC) of ALS cases, here we assessed the radiological appearance of the PMC in a cohort of HSP patients using iron-sensitive MR imaging and compared the PMC findings among HSP, PLS, and ALS patients.

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Background: Differentiating progressive supranuclear palsy-parkinsonism (PSP-P) from Parkinson's disease (PD) is clinically challenging.

Objective: This study aimed to develop an automated Magnetic Resonance Parkinsonism Index 2.0 (MRPI 2.

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Introduction: In Parkinson's disease (PD), non-motor fluctuations (NMFs), especially neuropsychiatric fluctuations, often coexist with motor fluctuations (MFs) but are often under-recognized by physicians and patients.

Objective: To investigate the relationship between MFs and neuropsychiatric fluctuations in PD.

Methods: PD patients with MFs and NMFs were enrolled.

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The standard management for relapsed or refractory classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL) is salvage therapy followed by autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT). This strategy allows almost 50% of patients to be cured. Post-ASCT maintenance treatment with brentuximab vedotin (BV) confers improved progression-free survival (PFS) to cHL patients at high risk of relapse.

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Ki67 labeling index (LI) has been proposed as a prognostic factor in uterine leiomyosarcoma (uLMS), although the evidence in this field is still unclear. We aimed to assess the prognostic value of ki67 LI in uLMS. A systematic review was performed by searching electronic databases from their inception to August 2020 for all studies assessing the prognostic value of ki67 LI in uLMS.

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