Publications by authors named "Francesca Locatelli"

Unlabelled: Asthma and obesity are both chronic diseases. Obesity is a common comorbidity and a risk factor of severe asthma, associated with increased asthma exacerbation risk, poorer asthma control and reduced quality of life. However, the responsible mechanisms are poorly understood.

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Introduction: Benzodiazepines (BDZs) are among the most abused substances worldwide, and high-dose BDZ abuse is considered a specific type of addiction. Cue reactivity (CR) is a hypersensitivity to motivational stimuli and, in substance use disorders, it increases craving and facilitates relapse, especially in chronic users. Virtual reality (VR) may be a viable technology to implement in CR paradigms.

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Purpose Of Review: The aim of this review is to provide an account of the focus of therapeutic strategies for hereditary angioedema (HAE), give a brief overview of those used in the past and set aside and toughly discuss those currently available as first line. Further research is ongoing and the future therapeutic approaches that are still in different phases of study will be reviewed as well.

Recent Findings: In the last two decades, major research advancements on HAE pathophysiology and management were made and numerous novel therapeutic options are now available.

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Background: Exposure to air pollution has been proposed as one of the potential risk factors for leukaemia. Work-related formaldehyde exposure is suspected to cause leukaemia.

Methods: We conducted a nested register-based case-control study on leukaemia incidence in the Viadana district, an industrial area for particleboard production in Northern Italy.

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Objectives: occupational exposure to vapours, gases, dusts and fumes (VGDF) plays an important role in the development and exacerbation of respiratory diseases. The aim of this study is to evaluate the possible association of occupational exposure to airborne pollutants and chronic respiratory diseases.

Design: multicase-control study.

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Long-term exposure to air pollution has adverse respiratory health effects. We investigated the cross-sectional relationship between residential exposure to air pollutants and the risk of suffering from chronic respiratory diseases in some Italian cities. In the BIGEPI project, we harmonised questionnaire data from two population-based studies conducted in 2007-2014.

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Background: Chipboard production is a source of wood dust, formaldehyde, and combustion-related pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide (NO) and particulate matter (PM). In this cohort study, we assessed whether exposures to NO, formaldehyde, PM, PM, and black carbon were associated with adverse respiratory and allergic outcomes among all 7525 people aged 0-21 years residing in the Viadana district, an area in Northern Italy including the largest chipboard industrial park in the country.

Methods: Data on hospitalizations, emergency room (ER) admissions, and specialist visits in pneumology, allergology, ophthalmology, and otorhinolaryngology were obtained from the Local Health Unit.

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Early life conditions are associated with lung function and the development of respiratory and non-respiratory illnesses. The relationship with birthweight (BW), however, is conflicting. We examined associations of self-reported BW with lung function and the development of respiratory and also non-respiratory diseases within the GEIRD (Gene-Environment Interaction in Respiratory Diseases) project, an Italian multi-centre, multi-case control study involving cases of COPD, asthma, allergic rhinitis and controls.

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Background: There is growing evidence that lung function in early-life predicts later lung function. Adverse events over the lifespan might influence an individual's lung function trajectory, resulting in poor respiratory health. The aim of this study is to identify early-life risk factors and their impact on lung function trajectories to prevent long-term lung impairments.

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Background: a number of studies highlighted increased mortality associated with hospital admissions during weekends and holidays, the so-call "weekend effect". In this retrospective study of mortality in an acute care public hospital in Italy between 2009 and 2015, we compared inpatient mortality before and after a major organizational change in 2012. The new model (Model 2) implied that the intensivist was available on call from outside the hospital during nighttime, weekends, and holidays.

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TORCH (Toxoplasmosis, Rubella, Cytomegalovirus, Herpes Simplex Virus and Syphilis) infections are a major cause of intrauterine and perinatal infections with associated morbidity and mortality. Neonatal Herpes Simplex Virus infection caused by an enveloped, double-stranded DNA virus of the Herpesviridae family is devastating and fatal. Herpes Viruses are not hepatotropic but may rarely cause hepatitis.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study assesses the management outcomes of Type II odontoid fractures in elderly patients (over 65 years) using the Grauer classification and evaluates factors affecting treatment success.
  • Among 34 eligible patients, conservative treatment for Type II fractures showed limited success, particularly for Type IIb, where surgical methods led to a 95% fusion rate and better clinical outcomes.
  • Findings suggest that surgical intervention, particularly the anterior approach for type IIb fractures, yields superior results compared to conservative management, highlighting the importance of assessing fracture characteristics and osteoporosis in treatment decisions.
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Background And Aims: The benefit of rapid on-site evaluation (ROSE) on the diagnostic accuracy of endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine-needle biopsy (EUS-FNB) has never been evaluated in a randomized study. This trial aimed to test the hypothesis that in solid pancreatic lesions (SPLs), diagnostic accuracy of EUS-FNB without ROSE was not inferior to that of EUS-FNB with ROSE.

Methods: A noninferiority study (noninferiority margin, 5%) was conducted at 14 centers in 8 countries.

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Patients with concomitant features of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) have a heavy disease burden.Using data collected prospectively in the European Community Respiratory Health Survey, we compared the risk factors, clinical history and lung function trajectories from early adulthood to late sixties of middle-aged subjects with asthma+COPD (n=179), past (n=263) or current (n=808) asthma alone, COPD alone (n=111) or none of these (n=3477).Interview data and pre-bronchodilator forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV) and forced vital capacity (FVC) were obtained during three clinical examinations in 1991-1993, 1999-2002 and 2010-2013.

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The functional properties of cerebellar stellate cells and the way they regulate molecular layer activity are still unclear. We have measured stellate cells electroresponsiveness and their activation by parallel fiber bursts. Stellate cells showed intrinsic pacemaking, along with characteristic responses to depolarization and hyperpolarization, and showed a marked short-term facilitation during repetitive parallel fiber transmission.

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Background: Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) has been reported to be significantly associated with chronic rhinosinusitis, but the strength of the association is still debated.

Aims: To evaluate the strength of the association between gastritis/GERD and non-allergic rhinitis (NAR)/allergic rhinitis (AR)/sinusitis.

Methods: We investigated 2887 subjects aged 20-84 years, who underwent a clinical visit in seven Italian centres (Ancona, Palermo, Pavia, Terni, Sassari, Torino, Verona) within the study on Gene Environment Interactions in Respiratory Diseases, a population-based multicase-control study between 2008 and 2014.

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Chipboard production is a source of ambient air pollution. We assessed the spatial variability of outdoor pollutants and residential exposure of children living in proximity to the largest chipboard industry in Italy and evaluated the reliability of exposure estimates obtained from a number of available models. We obtained passive sampling data on NO and formaldehyde collected by the Environmental Protection Agency of Lombardy region at 25 sites in the municipality of Viadana during 10 weeks (2017-2018) and compared NO measurements with average weekly concentrations from continuous monitors.

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The present study aims to prospectively assess the influence of respiratory disorders on smoking cessation and re-initiation. Three population-based Italian cohorts answered a questionnaire on respiratory health and smoking habits during 1998-2001 and after a mean follow-up (SD) of 9.1 (0.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study compared the effectiveness of EUS-guided fine-needle biopsy using fork-tip vs. side-fenestrated needles in patients with solid pancreatic lesions.
  • Both needle types showed similar safety and diagnostic accuracy, but fork-tip needles yielded significantly higher quality histologic samples and required fewer passes to establish a diagnosis.
  • The findings indicate that fork-tip needles are superior for obtaining reliable tissue samples, and macroscopic on-site evaluation (MOSE) performed better with these needles compared to side-fenestrated ones.
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Mucosal leishmaniasis (ML) is a rare clinical variant of tegumentary leishmaniasis in Mediterranean Europe. Here we report on three autochthonous cases of head and neck ML in patients living in Northeastern Italy. Patients presented with non-specific, long-standing symptoms of upper respiratory tract involvement, mimicking other diseases.

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Investigating COPD trends may help healthcare providers to forecast future disease burden. We estimated sex- and smoking-specific incidence trends of pre-bronchodilator airflow obstruction (AO) among adults without asthma from 11 European countries within a 20-year follow-up (ECRHS and SAPALDIA cohorts). We also quantified the extent of misclassification in the definition based on pre-bronchodilator spirometry (using post-bronchodilator measurements from a subsample of subjects) and we used this information to estimate the incidence of post-bronchodilator AO (AO), which is the primary characteristic of COPD.

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Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are pervasive neurodevelopmental conditions that often involve mutations affecting synaptic mechanisms. Recently, the involvement of cerebellum in ASDs has been suggested, but the underlying functional alterations remained obscure. We investigated single-neuron and microcircuit properties in IB2 (Islet Brain-2) KO mice of either sex.

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