Publications by authors named "Vassallo L"

Article Synopsis
  • Genetic alterations play a crucial role in cancer development, highlighting the need for effective genetic counselling to support patient decision-making in EU Member States.
  • A study of national legislation across 27 EU countries revealed that 22 have laws on genetic counselling, but practices and regulations differ significantly.
  • Common barriers include workforce capacity and genetic literacy, with calls for better integration of genetic counsellors and updated laws to improve the overall practice.
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Migraine is one of the most prevalent and disabling neurological conditions, presenting episodes of throbbing headache that limit activities of daily living. Several factors may influence migraine frequency, such as lifestyle or alcohol consumption. Among the most recognised ones, sleep plays a biunivocal role, since poor sleep quality may worsen migraine frequency, and a high migraine frequency may affect sleep quality.

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Chronic migraine is a burdensome condition, and onabotulinumtoxinA is revealed to be an effective therapy. Migraine shows a bidirectional relationship with sleep, but the effects of preventive therapies on sleep quality are poorly studied. This study aims to evaluate the effects of a single session of onabotulinumtoxinA on patients' sleep quality and correlates the results with measures of comorbid anxiety/depression.

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Social units, such as households and schools, can play an important role in controlling epidemic outbreaks. In this work, we study an epidemic model with a prompt quarantine measure on networks with cliques (a clique is a fully connected subgraph representing a social unit). According to this strategy, newly infected individuals are detected and quarantined (along with their close contacts) with probability f.

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The introduction of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) directed against the calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP), or its receptor (CGRPr), revolutionized migraine management due to their high efficacy and few side effects. Data suggest that the CGRP may even be implicated in circadian rhythm, but studies about the effect of anti-CGRP treatments on sleep are still lacking. The aim of the present study was to assess the effect of erenumab (70 and 140 mg per month), a human mAb directed against CGRPr, on chronotype in chronic migraineurs; secondly, we assessed its efficacy, safety, and the effects on anxiety and depression.

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This paper recognizes the relevance of the Seabed Cleaning Project, created by the Angelo Vassallo Sindaco Pescatore Foundation in 2010, and presents it as a tool to achieve benefits in environmental, social, and economic terms, in line with the innovative framework of the Blue Economy. The project suggests a practical, feasible, and scalable solution to plastic pollution that can be obtained thanks to the activity performed by fishermen in cooperation with the municipality and local community (in a multi-level cooperation perspective). The data show a significant reduction of plastic on the seafloor thanks to the project, but further research is needed in order to collect further positive outcomes from different applications of the project.

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Background: Paratesticular fibrous pseudotumor (PFP) is a rare intrascrotal benign fibrous mass of uncertain aetiology, usually arising between testicular tunica layers and is supposed to be related to inflammatory reactive conditions. Because of morphological similarities to IgG4-related sclerosing fibro-inflammatory lesions, some authors recently postulated that PFP might belong to the IgG4-related disease (IgG4-RD) family. Considering the rarity of this lesion, only few cases have been reported in literature about the correlation between IgG4-RD and PFP.

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Article Synopsis
  • Cluster headaches are intense, one-sided pains that occur in episodes, often linked to sleep patterns and circadian rhythms.
  • These headaches typically happen at night and can recur in clusters over several years, sometimes related to genetic factors and brain structures like the hypothalamus.
  • The review aims to explore the connection between chronobiology and cluster headaches to better understand their causes and potential treatment options.
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Chronic migraine is a burdensome disease presenting with episodic pain and several symptoms that may persist even among headache attacks. Multisensory integration is modified in migraine, as assessed by the level of the perception of sound-induced flash illusions, a simple paradigm reflecting changes in cortical excitability which reveals to be altered in migraineurs. OnabotulinumtoxinA is an effective preventive therapy for chronic migraineurs, reducing peripheral and central sensitization, and may influence cortical excitability.

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The aim of the study is to present and tune a fully automatic deep learning algorithm to segment colorectal cancers (CRC) on MR images, based on a U-Net structure. It is a multicenter study, including 3 different Italian institutions, that used 4 different MRI scanners. Two of them were used for training and tuning the systems, while the other two for the validation.

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A wide spectrum of anomalies of the pancreas, the pancreatic ductal system and the biliary tree are commonly encountered at radiologic evaluation. Pancreas bifidum, also known as bifid pancreas or fish-tail pancreas, is an extremely rare congenital branching anomaly of the main pancreatic duct characterized by its duplication. These 2 separate ducts are laid from the pancreatic tail to neck and they generally join at the pancreas body-tail draining via the major papilla; the pancreatic parenchyma is also bifurcated with separated dorsal and caudal buds.

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Anti-HER2 monoclonal antibody trastuzumab improves the survival of those patients with advanced gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma (GEA) exhibiting HER2/ overexpression/amplification. The current gold standard methods used to diagnose the HER2 status in GEA are immunohistochemistry (IHC) and silver or fluorescence in situ hybridization (SISH or FISH). However, they do not permit spatial and temporal tumor monitoring, nor do they overcome intra-cancer heterogeneity.

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Background: Pathological complete response after neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy in locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC) is achieved in 15-30% of cases. Our aim was to implement and externally validate a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based radiomics pipeline to predict response to treatment and to investigate the impact of manual and automatic segmentations on the radiomics models.

Methods: Ninety-five patients with stage II/III LARC who underwent multiparametric MRI before chemoradiotherapy and surgical treatment were enrolled from three institutions.

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The aim of the present study is to assess saliva as a reliable specimen for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) detection by real-time reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR), especially in community mass screening programs. The performance analysis considered 1,221 total samples [nasopharyngeal (NP) swabs and corresponding saliva], tested by means of a reference diagnostic real-time RT-PCR assay. Conflicting results were further investigated with a second, more sensitive, reference assay.

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Chemotherapy could induce benign liver alterations presenting as diffuse or focal lesions mimicking metastases. Oxaliplatin-induced vascular liver injury is described in literature, but the association with FNH-like lesions has been reported in a limited number of cases. We herewith describe the case of a 67-year-old male, who had laparoscopic right-sided hemicolectomy, 8 years ago, because of colonic adenocarcinoma (pT3N0M0) and subsequent adjuvant chemotherapy (capecitabine + oxaliplatin), who referred to the ultrasound service of our Radiology Unit because of abdominal pain.

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Article Synopsis
  • Bivalve shellfish can get contaminated by human pathogens, including SARS-CoV-2, due to polluted waters, raising concerns about the virus's presence in these mollusks.
  • A study collected 179 bivalve samples from the Campania region between September 2019 and April 2021, finding SARS-CoV-2 in 15.1% of them, with a higher detection rate after January 2021.
  • The research also identified mutations linked to the Alpha variant in some samples, highlighting bivalves as potential indicators for monitoring SARS-CoV-2 in water bodies and tracking viral trends.
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Background: We report the first case of a patient affected by peritoneal metastases from colon cancer, arising in the context of Lynch syndrome with pathological complete response. The patient was treated with immunotherapy and cytoreductive surgery. This paper discusses the implications of these novel therapies for the management of PM.

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The emergence and spread of SARS-CoV-2 has led to a compelling request for accurate diagnostic tests. The aim of this study was assessing the performance of a real-time RT-qPCR (rt RT-qPCR) assay and of a droplet digital RT-PCR (dd RT-PCR) targeting the nsp14 genome region for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 in nasopharyngeal swabs. A total of 258 nasopharyngeal swabs were analyzed with the nsp14 assays and, for comparison, with a reference assay targeting the RdRp and E genes.

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Breast metastases are uncommon findings compared to primary breast cancer and in particular bilateral secondary breast lesions from neuroendocrine tumor (NET)s are extremely rare with just less over 13 cases described in literature. We reported herewith the case of a 54-year-old woman who presented to our Breast Unit after noticing multiple, mobile, bilateral breast lumps. Imaging studies confirmed the presence of multiple, circumscribed, bilateral breast masses with slightly spiculated margins, classified as suspicious for malignancy (BI-RADS 4).

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Peripheral neuroblastic tumors are extremely rare in the adult with less just over 20 cases involving adrenal gland described in the literature. We reported herewith the case of a 22-year-old young male who presented with epigastric pain and diarrhea. Imaging studies documented a 3.

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Gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma (GEA) patients with the microsatellite instability (MSI) subtype emerged as optimal candidates for immunotherapy. To date, immunohistochemistry (IHC) is the gold standard for MSI assessment in formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) specimens. However, IHC, although useful for diagnostic typing, cannot be used to analyze cell-free DNA (cfDNA) in liquid biopsy, a tool that could overcome tumor heterogeneity and enable longitudinal monitoring.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged authorities at different levels of government administration around the globe. When faced with diseases of this severity, it is useful for the authorities to have prediction tools to estimate in advance the impact on the health system as well as the human, material, and economic resources that will be necessary. In this paper, we construct an extended Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Recovered model that incorporates the social structure of Mar del Plata, the 4°most inhabited city in Argentina and head of the Municipality of General Pueyrredón.

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SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of the COVID-19 pandemic, has rarely been associated with transmission from humans to animals (reverse zoonotic transmission). In this retrospective study, the authors reviewed data obtained from 236 animals, including buffaloes, goats/sheep, horses, carrier pigeons, rabbits, hens, snakes, pigs and cows that were screened for SARS-CoV-2 infection because they had been in contact with their SARS-CoV-2-positive breeder for at least 2 weeks. None of the tested animals were found to be positive.

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Recently, Computer Aided Diagnosis (CAD) systems have been proposed to help radiologists in detecting and characterizing Prostate Cancer (PCa). However, few studies evaluated the performances of these systems in a clinical setting, especially when used by non-experienced readers. The main aim of this study is to assess the diagnostic performance of non-experienced readers when reporting assisted by the likelihood map generated by a CAD system, and to compare the results with the unassisted interpretation.

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